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IXTE RP RE TAT IO X 

ATlT-pwho conie into tlie ^rorliancl aHye ^rlio oo out 
of itiuow this.tliat tlie Gods iate iuipudeiLce . 




loxdo:n; 

PUBLISHED BXLOXGMAX,:REES,OB3rE AXDC? 
AND RICKABB 3IILLIKEX A S OX DUBLIN 

1828. 



f 



TR4-i«> 



r 



IN AID 

OF THE LAUDABLE EFFORTS 

WHICH 

" THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF 
USEFUL KNOWLEDGE " 

IS AT THIS MOMENT MAKING, 

" To render Science domestic and familiar, and to emancipate 
her from the trammels of Scholarship," 

THIS CATALOGUE (non) RAISONNE 
OF " ESSENTIALS" 

IS CONDESCENDINGLY CONTRIBUTED, 



STSaamatuttjug. 



Given in my " Patmos,*' on the 445th Day of 
the * Second " Year of Confusion.*' 



* The Fir s t i« known to have been 46 A, C. 



Printed by Bentham & Hardy. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



" Dove Diavolo, Messer Ludovico, avete pig- 
Hate tante coglionerie!" was the jocular apos- 
trophe of Cardinal Hippolito D'Este to Ariosto, 
who had inscribed the Orlando to his Eminence. 
The Hero of this performance, assuming to be 
sublimed above the level of humanity, concedes 
to his Readers full permission to apply to it, in 
every modification of paraphrase, the interroga- 
tory of the Cardinal. They may freely ask, 
" Where the Devil, Master (Thaumaturgus), 
have you helped yourself to so many absur- 
dities ?" He can felicitously reply, adopting 
the subtle and convenient distinction of the 
Schools, " Varlets ! these things are not con- 
trary to reason, but above it." 

To be serious and historical: This most 
whimsical farrago of " all such reading as has 
ne'er been read" was compiled and reduced to 
doggvel at different intervals, some years since. 

a 2 



VI. ADVERTISEMENT. 

It owes its origin to an attempt to sustain, at 
a Civic Masquerade in Dublin, the character of 
a kind of literary Munchausen, when to render 
the representation intelligible (lucus a non — ) 
a few of the less abstruse allusions to the mar- 
vellous, were hastily grouped together. — The 
Writer was subsequently induced to mispend 
some sleepless hours, in conjuring up, from 
the Limbus of a memory fatally tenacious of 
the odd and useless, the " visions of many 
dreamers," and associating them with certain 
grotesque phantasms of his own. Thus has 
the fugitive extravaganza been shadowed out 
to the proportions of a book, which it was his 
first intention to have thrown into the world 
as a literary puzzle, " ungarnished with refer- 
ences." Indeed, to have supplied satisfactory 
illustrations seriatim, would almost require a 
" re-union" of the Variorum Annotators. A com- 
paratively small number of notes, derived from 
recollection, or the most obvious sources, have, 
however, been added, while the sheets were 
passing through the press. As he cannot afford 
to have his sanity impeached, the Writer, in 
conclusion, exclaims with Paul before Festus, 

Ovfxalpofxat — " I AM NOT MAD !" 



llfauWBfaVfUl 



" Tot mysteria quot punctct, tot arcana quot apices." 

Possevini, 

%i ament meminisse periti." 



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f~£ir z> 



dbt-x-^z 



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BWot& at t\)t Unomsal passion* 



<c Young's universal passion— .Pride, 

Was never known to spread so wide."— SWIFT r 



Wfyt Challenge* 

VAIN VARLETS ! 

Con the scrolls of time. 
And search each sublunary clime ■ 
Condensing — soon as ye explore all— 
Your powers, both physical and moral. 
Through hosts of heroes Fame may roll ye on. 
From th* Hunkiar* Genghis to Napoleon ; 
Foiled there — midst living lights ye may go 
From fPetowack to Terr' Fuego ; 

* Manslayer* 

t Capital of the Arctic regions. 



8 Clwumaturgttg. 

Scan your whole braggart brood, and / bet 

That none from Tombuctoo to Tibet, 

Sibir to Spain — Tobolsk to Burgos, 

Shall dare compete with ThaumaTurgus, 

Who recreates him in achieving 

Deeds, which some dolts deem past believing. 

Quite as an Imp^ovvisatore, 
I give this fragment of my story ; 
Spurn dates and order with impunity, 
And laugh at quantity and unity. 
These sketches,- autoschediastic, 
Thrown off in rhyme, hight Hudibrastic,— 
Fools, boasting j#y£, not blest with one sense, 
Will damn, as concentrated nonsense. 
Not Trismegistus'* pond'rous pile 
Of folios — they'd enrampart Lisle ; 



* He wrote 36.525 Books.- Manetho— Class. Jour. Origen 
produced 6,000. — Lardner, 



CfjaumaturguS, 

Qrigeris tome? conjoined to that again^ 
The Books of Memphis, and the Vatican, 
(From Memphis Homer filch' d the Odysseys,*) 
With Omars holocaust of Codices, t 
Could publish, of my awful actions, 
More than a few inferior fractions. 



J?tttj)£niJatts Hearttittg. 

Were sheets of fair papyrus curl'd 
Round the vast vault that ceils the World, 
While Ocean rolled from brink to brink 
One broad, unfathomed, tide of ink, 

* Naucrates accuses Homer of having stolen the Iliad and 
Odyssey out of books in the Library of Memphis, now 
Cairo. — Peignot. This charge is disposed of elsewhere, in 
referring to Pere Hardouin's Theory. 

f The Alexandrian Library. 

b2 



10 ©frauniatttrjju*. 

'Twould not suffice — if Jews speak true — 
To tell what Eliezir knew ; * 
He wrote— sad shelf that such huge book cumbers- 
Three thousand rules for curing cucumbers, 
Let, now, these ample scrolls be bent 
O'er all the eclips'd firmament — 
Bid every sea become a Black sea, 
Then, place a Scribe on Cotapaxi, 
Your best of stenographic Men, 
And arm him with Allatius' pen,f 
Wherewith (unnibVd) that Scholiast Sage 
Scrawled German-Greek, through half an age— 
The Scribe, on Andes' rock-built ridge, 
In short-hand may compress, abridge, 
Squander his temper, time, and skill — ■ 
Wear to a stump that stubborn quill — - 



* " If the firmament were converted into vellum, and the 
ocean into ink it would not be sufficient to describe what Rabbi 
Eliezir knew. lie indited 3,000 precepts respecting the ma- 
nagement of cucumbers." — Gregoire. 

t Allatius used one pen for 50 years. 



CSaumaturgug. 11 

While with the whirling globe he turns, 

Exhausting ocean's inky urns. 

He'll prove those vast materials vain ; 

The sheeted sphere could scarce contain 

(Though crammed with cyphers to each scroll edge) 

Brief rubrics, to my world of knowledge. 



i&2 $rtjjtm 

Man's information vague and scant is 
Of my proud country, the Atlantis ; 
Though th' Ancients fill'd its ports with squadrons, 
It lies incog, to swaggering Moderns, 
And off its northern naze, Perouse,* 
Blundering on breakers, closed his cruise. 

* If he was not cast away there, where else could he have 
been cast away ? 



J 2 ffl&aumaturgu*. 

You ask its bearings, and its seas : 
South of those isles, some few degrees, 
Where — famed for their productions puzzling- 
Willows bear nuts, each nut a gosling, 
And Soland geese, in guise of fruit, 
Hang ripening from each loaded shoot.* 
These point the track in part, but chief 
'Tis mark'd, by that terrific reef 
Where storm-tost Heinson's bark erratic f 
Was stay'd, by magnets subaquatic. 
Tn that far realm — though strange, 'tis true— 
1 rose — I was not born, but grew, 
Not e'en begot in the same way as 
Famed Appollonius Thyaneus, 



* Fulgosus affirms, that trees, resembling- willows, bear at 
the ends of their branches small balls, containing the embryo 
of a duck, which hangs by the bill, and when ripe falls into the 
sea, and takes to its wings. — See Buffon, &c. 

t " Mogens Heinson, one of the early Northern Navigators, 
asserted that the progress of his vessel was arrested by load- 
stone rocks, under the water, off the coast of Greenland." — 
Quar. Rev. Oct. 1817. 



£baumaturgu2. 13 



Betwixt a Wench and Salamander, 
(Parents just fit for Alexander,) 
T own nor Mother, Sire, nor Coz ; 
Nature evolved me from a Luz, * 
Which long in pupa state enshrined 
The elements of Form and Mind. 



iPrtcciriti), 



Fame blazons loud the pow'rs precocious 
Of Chritchton, Heineken,t and Grotius, 



• The seed from which, according to the Jews, the body is 
to be reproduced. It is described as a bone, in shape like 
an almond, that can neither be broken, consumed, nor dis- 
solved. — Luz an sit os vertebrarum, an vera sesamoideum in pe- 
de dubitatur. Steph. Blancard Lexic. Med. 

f Born in Lubeck in 1721. He had acquired a complete 
knowledge of the Scriptures at 14 months old, and was esteem- 
ed an excellent classical and science scholar in the fourth year 



14 Cj&aumaturcjug. 

The second, ere his months reached twenty, took 

Long learned lectures in the Pentateuch : 

And when his fragile clock of life 

Had struck the little age of five, 

With aptness premature, he ran on 

Through codes of Civil Law and Canon : 

Gulped mathematics, mixed and pure, up ; 

But ere th* expecting hand of Europe 

The fruit thus early blown could gather, ah ! 

He died of literary plethora. 

Let Lubeck's gossips talk with tremor, on 

This lost illustrious Ephemeron.- — 

Judge of Mankind's amaze, when first 

Upon the wondering world I burst ! 

My eyes, full-orb'd, reflected bright 

Young intuition's lively light; 

Keen as a Calmuck's, too, whose glance, 

Along the treeless Steppes expanse 

of his age. He died at the age of five. His Life was published 
in 2 vols, by Martini, in 1730. 



CJmumaturgus. 15 

Descries the foernen's motley files, 
Still distant five long German miles, 
Gauging their squadron's breadth and bulk, 
He shews the He t man, names the Pulk, 
And tells what chiefs, in each battalion, 
Are horsed on gelding, mare, or stallion. 

Mere man, in this benighted time, 
Is deemed a mocking-bird — a mime ; 
No heritor of speech, but catches 
The patois of his nurse by snatches ; 
Mar but his ear's sound-seizing drum, 
Babe, boy, and adult, he lives dumb. 
Say, ye sophisticated fools, 
Deep read in all, save Nature's, schools, 
Why hath not History's noontide light, 
Chased these dull dreams of mental night ? 
A brace of Kings — sooth-searching sages- 
Reigning in different realms and ages, 



16 C&aumaturgug. 

One a shrewd Scot, and one a Phrygian, has 

Proved language to mankind indigenous ! 

The first — the story is Pitcairn's — * 

Placed, with a tongue-tied nurse, two " bairns" 

In a lone isle, and lowly cot, 

Tabooing then the sea-girt spot, 

Till, nature-taught, the hermit-boys 

Proved words to co-exist with voice, 

And call'd for crowdy to the Crone, in 

Hebrew, unmixed with Babylonian : 

And of that dialect purely known 

To Heber's holy house alone. f 



* He says, that two male infants were placed with a deaf and 
dumb nurse, in the island of Inchkeith, to ascertain whether 
man spoke naturally an articulate language, and if so, what 
that language was : — the result is stated to have been as de- 
scribed. Psammeticus, the Phrygian, made the same experi- 
ment. — Herodotus. 

f The family of Heber, not having been concerned in the 
building of Babel, were, it is said, permitted to preserve 
the Hebrew language in its purity during the confusion. — 
Prideaux. Connections. Jenning's Jewish Antiq. 



The next King, at an earlier era, 

For the same end, resolved to rear a 

Suckling Babe with a sourde muette 

Nurse ; and, as the bantling grew, it 

Shewed the point similarly solved— 

The oral organs soon evolved ; 

And the emphatic noun that broke 

From his first lispings, when he spoke, 

Was — no apostrophe to Jove — 

But beccos, Phrygian for a loaf. 

Even here, where moral swaddlings bind 

The young developments of mind, — 

Like cramping clogs, which, locked to insteps, 

Compel the Pekin Belles to mince steps, 

Frail Fashion's fiat there commanding 

Such outrage on the understandings — 

Even here, from babe's untutored lips 

The dear dissyllable that slips, 

In mamma blends— so instinct leads it— 

The mother with the fount that feeds it, 



18 <EIjaumaturgu$. 

80 that, in line, it matters not, 

Be the Babe Phrygian, Frank, or Scot, 

Or of whatever Clan or Clime, 

Set in the ring of Earth, or Time — 

Still, in the way of nurture, somewhat 

Forms the prime note of Nature's gamut. 

Prompt to fulfil her sacred nonce, 

No Infant* I — I spoke at once ; 

Scorn'd Men's mean cognoms — Capet — Guelph, 

Chose and conferred upon myself 

(This my first locutory work was) 

The simple "style" of Thaumaturgus. 

Pedants of Cambridge, Oxford, Eton, 

Applaud the congruent epitheton. 

Not Chritchton, Grotius, nor e'en Heineken, 

Dare claim precocity to mine akin ; 

Than Lipsius self, I proved astuter, tho' 

That Sage philosophized in utero. 

* Quasi. In. fart. 



"More than his acumen — yea, more 
Than Belgium'? schools can boast of lore, 
'Mongst natives, denizens, or aliens, 
Was centred in my punctum saliens. 

I, if by system's slaves beguiled, would 
Imprimis tell my feats of childhood ; 
The Muse, who bows to my behest, 
Sings one — tax fancy for the rest. 
Oft have grave Jurisconsults shewed 
The marvels of that copious code, 
Which sways all actions and opinions, 
Throughout the *Bogdoi Khan's dominions; 
Whose dogmata subdue dispute, 
In matters mighty or minute. 
Volumes so vast, in stuff and size, 
That code fills, that your vulgar eyes, 



* Bogdoi Khan, the proper style of the Chinese Monarch. 
-De Lange. 



20 €|mumatttrgu& 

To con mere side-notes to the pages, 

Should shine and study through three ages : 

Yet, Thaumaturge, on the first day 

He felt the vivifying ray, 

When your blind babes would mewl, and scorn book, 

Using this huge work as a horn-book, 

Through the text Leu, the comment Lee,* 

From Ta Sing backwards to Lee Quee, 

Preface to finis, marge to marge, 

All China s u Statute Laws at large" 

Perused with relish, and digested them ; 

Fo-hi and Confuce framed the best of them ! 



* The earliest compilation of Chinese laws, found by Sir 
George Staunton, is that of Lee Quee, who lived 950 years 
before Christ. The Leu is the fundamental code ; the Lee the 
commentary. The Chinese assert that it would take 300 years 
to read their body of laws through, 



C&atumaturgus 21 



IB}) Boots. 

Exempli gratia, how my gust stirs ! 
Ere I'd u perlustrated two lustres]'* 
I'd pushed my theologic lore on, 
Through Edda, Vedam, Talmud, Koran— 
The last I loved, maugre its blunders, 
Traversed its wilderness of wonders ; 
It taught, that a colossal Ox, 
Firm pedestal' d on Parian blocks, 
Pois'd the huge earth upon his back, 
As sumpter mule sustains a pack : 
Largest of living things, his horn 
Caught the first twinklings of the morn, 
While his lithe tail, whisk' d free and far, 
Caused to nictate the western star. 

* Old Jocelyn, the Biographer of St. Patrick, mentioning- 
that his hero was about fifteen years old, uses the phrase " Per- 
lustravit tria lustra," which a recent translator quaintly ren- 
ders he perlustrated three lustres. 



22 €$anmatttrgu& 

Eastward I sped, and with my cutlass 

FelFd at one stroke this vaccine Atlas ; 

These leathern tubes of ball-proof strength, 

Of vast calibre, weight, and length, 

Jack-boots, of awful depth, wherein 

I'm wont, in war, t' ensconce my shin, 

Were diagrammed upon his side : 

And carved out from the reeking hide, 

Each glittering sole which 'neath my fetlock lays,* 

Erst form'd a sandal for Empedocles ;* 

When Etna spatchcock' d the Philosopher, 

His brazen brogues she chose to toss over, 



* * Eheu! Alvary, and Priscian, ' lays 9 for * lies.' — Cockney 

Cockneys, Catullus proves, were nurs'd in 
Old Rome, e'en in her age Augustan. 
Arrius as such the Bard impeaches ; 
Kemble would bid him spare his H's (aches,) 

DE ARRIO. 

" Chornmoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet 
Dicere, et hinsidias Arrius insidias, 
****** 
Ionios fluctus, postqnam illuc Arrius isset 
Jam non Ionios esse, sed Hionios." 

C.atull. Carm. Ixxxiv, 



CJjaumaturgu^ 23 

As they had posed, beyond all question. 
Her ostrich organs of digestion : 
Such soles (if damn'd souls could, 'twere well,) 
May pace unharm'd the floors of Hell. 

I've forged the hob-nails that environ 
The heels, from that strange " pig of iron/' 
Which on Oturnba's Pampa lies, 
The gaze of philosophic eyes.* 
Some think this Alp of ore, to pelt us, 
Was thrown un wrought from. Nature's smelt-house ; 
If for the truth you care a button, 
Consult La Place. Poisson, and Hutton ; 
Learn'd Lunatics ! they ve, to a fraction, 
Defined the Moon's and Earth's attraction ; 
From them the " flaming fact" you may know— 
This mass launched from the Moon's volcano, 



* One of those masses of meteoric iron 5 supposed by some 
philosophers to have been ejected from a volcano in the Moon, 



24 ©aumaturgu* 

Had there long weltered in a pickle 
Of molten sulphur, lime, and nickel ; 
Earth's "slough" at last — I'm geognostic- 
May be consumed by " Lunar caustic" 



These antique Spurs, whose hoops of steel 
Peninsulate my clattering heel, 
By turns, in Buskin, Boot, or Clog, 
Were made for the "man-mountain," Gog ; 
This goodly ant'diluvian Giant 
Had of the Deluge got a sly hint r 
And — ('tis so stated by a Rabbin*)—- 
Had begg'd a birth in Noah's cabin, 



* The Rabbins make the giant Gog, or Magog, contempo- 
rary with Noah, and convinced by his preaching, so that he 



23)aumaturgu£, 25 

But could not in that monstrous hulk — 
"Tis of his longitude and bulk 

A marv'lous. tho' authentic, index — 
Lie, sit, stand, kneel, or squat between decks ; 
Like Bacchus, who 's pourtray'd a-straddle 
O'er pipe or puncheon, without saddle, 
Gog, ec en Cavalier," used the Ark as 
A cock-horse, to sustain his carcase, 
Bestrode its roof, and plunged those rowels 
In the vast vessel's yearning bowels ; 
Maintain' d his seat (in tacks) by either leg," 
Now by his lee, and now his weather leg : 



was disposed to ; take the benefit* of the Ark. But here lay the 
distress — it by no means suited his dimensions ; therefore, as 
he could not enter in, he contented himself to ride upon it ; 
and although you must suppose that in stormy weather he wa*, 
more than " half boots over," he kept his seat, aud dismount- 
ed safely when the Ark reached Ararat. — Warburton' $ Letters, 
This same Gog had, according to the Rabbins, a thigh-bone 
so long, that a stag, pursued by the hunters, employed half a 
day in running along it, 

c2 



26 CjjaumaturguS. 

And thus the Talmud Scribes, who tell huge 
Stories, swear Gog rode out the Deluge, 



These Gallygaskins of tough leather, 
That guard my loins from wintry weather, 
And fit each thigh with so much grace on, 
Are the true Ram-skin seized by Jason, 
And smuggled, in his stout Armado, 
From Colchis — th' ancient El Dorado. 

Ev'n of the woof used in these Hosen, 
Which case, like Irish trowse,* the toes in, 

* " Trowse are breeches and stockings, made to sit as close 
to the body as can be," — Cox's History of Ireland. 



Sfiatumatttvgus, 27 



The Sister Fates, at my request, half 
Supplied from their terrific distaff; 
Lachesis, whom my Valet wheedles, 
Knit them with Cleopatra's Needles. 



Barepate Suarrow* started, shock* cl at 
The shape and shadow of my Cock'd-\idX ; 
Huge hemisphere of felt — its span is 
Like the Rialto's arch, at Venice. 
Ceace, Ornithologists, to wonder 
At bombast tales of Roc and Condor : 
Polo,f who lauds the first, will swear he 
Oft bears an Elephant to his eyry ; 



* The Russian General usually went bare-headed 
f Marco. 



~ s ©Ijauniaturtju*. 

The latter fowl, at one short luncheon, 

Gorges an ox and gulps a puncheon. 

The villous sheathing of my bonnet, 

And gloomy grove of plumes upon it, 

In the fierce Vulture's pairing season, 

I ravished from the crest and weason 

Of — Rabbins lend your loftiest words— 

Barjuchne* Behemoth of Birds ! 

When but a flutt'ring eyasmusket,f 

Her wings made midnight, ere 'twas dusk yet: 

Cnce from her nest a huge egg fell, 

Earth shook beneath the shatter' d shell ; 

Forth gushed a deluge of albumen, 

Swamping towers, towns, men, brats, and women. 

Thus much the turgid Talmud fellows say ; 

The yelk now forms a sea— the Yellow sea. 



* The Bird Barjuchne, of the Talmud, covers the sun with 
its wings displayed. An addle-egg having dropped from its 
nest, crushed 300 large cedars, and overwhelmed 60 cities.— 
Gregoire. 

f A young bird of prey. 



CJjauttiaturgug. 29 



2£»ig, ^ueue, anti 33eaift. 

Mantling my bro\vs ; this peerless Periwig- 
Is, by authentic proofs, the very wig 
Made, when such skull-caps were yet rare, 
From ill-starr'd Abs'lom's fatal hair. 
Happy for him. had it been shorn, 
And as a wig thus wove and worn — 
He'd purchased life, when trees confined him, 
By leaving the peruke behind him. 
x\las, " the universal teacher, 
Art," had not then supplanted Nature. 

Close to my nape the Queue's applied; 
There with the Gordian knot 'tis tied ; 
Sheath'' d in Adonis's wild hogs tail, 
And tufted with that precious dog's tail, 
Which Alcibiades, the ninny, 
Docked, though the cur cost sixty mince— 



30 ftfwuttiatuvgu*. 

Proud that his mutilating forceps 
Gave table-talk to Attic gossips.* 

These horrent bristles, whose fierce patches 
Invest my mazard, as mustaches, 
Fringing the wrinkles to their last row, 
Were nourished 'neath the nose of Castro ; 
Hirsute Hidalgo ! — he, we're told, 
Prizing his whiskers beyond gold, 
Raised, erst, a large loan on these toopees, 
And pawn'd them for some lacks of rupees. f 
The blowzy beard, whose curly copse 
Luxuriates round my firm-flesh'd chaps, 
Lending an air severe and serious, 
Grew on the dewlaps of Papirius,^ 

* Plutarch, article Alcibiades. 

t John de Castro pledged his whiskers at Goa for ,£10,000, 
Baldwin, Prince of Edessa, also pawned his beard for a large 
sum, and it was afterwards redeemed by his father. — Alaric, 
by treaty, touched the beard of Clovis, and was thence ac- 
counted his Godfather. 

J Papirius and the other Senators who remained with him at 



fcijaumaturjju*. 31 

First Martyr of Rome's captive Senate ; 
He swore no barber's blade should thin it, 
Nor the vile suds of Gaulic tonsor 
Baptize, though Brermus' self stood Sponsor. 



My circling Neck-stock gives, in sooth, 
So tangible a test of truth, 
That self-sufficient " sceptic owls, 
(" Who will not credit their own souls, 
" Nor any science understand, 
" Beyond the reach of eye and hand — 
" But measuring all things by their own 
" Knowledge, deem nothing can be known/') 



Rome, when the Gauls entered the city, wore very long 
beards. — Livy, 1. v. 



32 ©Jaumatuvgug, 

Shan't dare to contradict or flout me; 
Not stubborn Saadi's* self shall doubt me. 
This Stock, with talismanic spring, 
Is the Jadh Morain — mystic ring ; f 
"Tis a thin, polished, pliant, cold bar 
Of steel — a sort of " moral toll-bar/' 
Which, spanning a narrator's nape, 
Should any fiction try to 'scape, 
Shuts the lungs' turnpike, en garrotte, 
And gives the lie right in the throat, 



Dorset, 

This Gorget's brazen frame was torn 
From Alexander's wondrous horn, 



* " All wisdom consisteth in doubting." — Saadi. 
t Keating mentions a miraculous Collar, used to try the 
integrity of witnesses, which, if it were put round the neck 
of a person who designed giving a false narrative, continued 



Which — in ore terrifically tonic 

Than *Morland's tube stentorophonic,— 

Through two Italian leagues a lisp or 

Sigh could sibilate or whisper ; 

E'en of its under tones, the sound 

Burst Echo's ear-drum, when 'twas wound, 

Where Titan Cheops' dust lies hid 

Beneath his Alp-like pyramid, 

I, to awake its slumbering tongues, 

Mustered my peerless powers of lungs, 

Applied the bugle to my lip o* days, 

Resolved to startle the Antipodes. 

The shadow of its mighty cone, 

On Egypt's mirage-mirror thrown, 

Seemed to the marvelling Mamlouk's view, 

As if the Fane of Shoomadoo, 



closing till it had either throttled hina, or extorted the truth, 
Wilkinson's Survey of Ireland. The Author of the " Memoirs 
of Captain Rock," transferring the Collar from the witness to 
the Judge, has made an ingenious use of this fable. 
* The inventor of the speaking-trumpet. 



34 ©Saumatttrgu*. 

- 
From its deep-seated base uptorn, 

I'd raised, in mockery of the horn 

Feigned as Orlando's thunder-breather, 

Which sixty Stentors filled together : 

And when (in nautic phrase) I " Mowed" 

In the forgotten " Phrygian mode/' 

Furious and fierce, the brazen vast 

Owned the old battle-breathing blast, 

As if the struggling storms, long pent 

In Eol's caverned tenement, 

Had (through its rifted roof uphurled) 

Burst at one belch upon the world ; 

Whilst, heading his hoarse-throated host, 

The God himself gave up the ghost ; 

*So, 'midst th' Olympic feats, in sunny days 

Of Greece, the liquid-lipp'd Harmonides 



* Magnificent specimen of the anticlimax — " Thunder and 
Timotheus strive for mastery.' ' — Hurricane, earthquake, and 
explosion, likened to the piping" of a warbling fifer. 



C&3umaturjju& 35 

Exhausted, in his warbling fife, 

Th' ethereal aliment of life. 

At my first blast, the tube was rent 

Right from the mouth-piece to the vent ; 

: Xeath the tornado gust, the land 

Heaved its huge hills of living sand, 

Whose billows (high as waves of Noah's seas) 

Swamped Archipelagos of Oases— 

Gay groups of sand-encircled isles, 

Where thirsty Nature deftly smiles, 

And flings, rejoicing in her reign, 

Her greenest garment on the plain. 

The blast from Afric's steaming side 

Roll'd back the mighty midland tide, 

Whose surges toss'd their daggling spray on 

The stars that stud the Empyrean ; 

The cloud that broods on Etna's crest, 

(Like Phoenix on her fiery nest,) 

Dishevell'd raised its dusky form, 

Then drifted into space — the storm 



36 2Tijaumatunj;u£. 

Shook earth to Genoa's walls, from Gizah, 
And, gasping 'gainst the Tow'r of Pisa, 
Bent it — (to feet I'm not particular) — 
Some fathoms from the perpendicular. 



ilipe mis &\x\i&=Max. 

Deep as huge *Teutobocchus' " CAako" t 
The bowl where glows my rare tobacco — 
(Whom phthysics teaze not, toil can't tire)— I 
Broke from the peak of Dhawal'giri,i 
Earth's newly-known, yet boldest boss, 
Which leaps into the clouds two coss ; 



* The skeleton of King Teutobocchus is said to have been 
found in the year 1613, and to have measured twenty-six feet 
in length. 

f The military cap. 

% The loftiest of the Himala Mountains, 26,000 feet high, 



Citfuntatuvgu^. 37 

Its circuit; measured at the base, is 

Full half a crore of Pundit's paces.* 

The Pipe's lip-piece, wherewith I cram mouth. 

Is the true wise-tooth of a Mammoth, 

Culled by my body-servant, Toby, 

On the alluvial isles of Oby ; 

Its soldering is of molten lava ; 

Its tube the Upas-tree of Java — 

That tree, whene'er I visit, grows gay ; 

I wear its blossoms as a nosegay. 

Sol, at th' Equator, crack' d (no small nut) 
Earth's shell — like shell of roasted wallnut ; 
I probed the centre's depth infernal, 
And scooped my Snuff-Box from the kernel, 
Which fills that dark, deep-seated valley— 
('Tis the "magnetic Pole" of Halley) ; 



* Frazer's Journey. 



38 €J>aumaturgu& 

The spheric mass of loam and rock 
Ne'er suffered such convulsive shock 
Since Adam made Eve bone of his bone- 
It caused the earthquake that razed Lisbon. 



My Watch, a true antique, was plann'd, 
And fashioned by that Artist's hand, 
Who framed in Basle the cozening chime 
Which once, by antedating time, 
Parried the foeman's fix'd attack, 
And saved the town from storm and sack,* 



* Basle was to have been assaulted by the French, when 
the town clock struck one at night. The artist who had the 
care of the clock, coming to a knowledge of the signal, made 
the chimes strike the hour of two instead of one ; and the ene- 



Still, at the hoax, an arch automaton 
Winks (jeering wag!) the steeple's summit on— 
Lolls his loose tongue, by secret screws held, 
In mockery of the Gaul bamboozled, 

Of Memnon's form, the voiceless wreck stand- 
Wallowing, like giant quagg'd in quicksands. 
Time was, when the reviving ray 
Of orient or departing day, 
Athwart those marble features thrown, 
CalFd forth a deep and dulcet tone.* 



my, imagining that they had arrived too late, relinquished the 
attempt. — The clocks of the town have continued, since that 
event, to go an hour faster than elsewhere — and a head which 
lolls its tongue out deridingly, with its face turned towards 
the road by which the enemy retreated, is referred to as con- 
firming this tale. 

* Humholt was informed that sounds like those of an organ- 
were heard at sunrise from the granite rocks on the banks of 
the Oroonoko, produced, he supposes, by the difference of 
temperature between the external air and that contained in the 
crevices. — Jomard heard at sunrise, in a monument at Karnak, 



40 €fmumaiurgu£. 

One glance — I was my own espial — 
Proved that broad bust was erst a Dial ; 
Its cheeks the field — its nose the gnomon — 
Such nose might Mahomet well roam on ; * 
I probed its apex, and there found 
The latent principle of sound, 
Which, seized to make my Watch completer, 
Rings as sonnette to my Repeater. 



cfflaslu 

My Powder-flask, for war or sport, is 
Made from th' exuvia? of the Tortoise, 



a noise resembling a strong breathing. This is supposed to 
explain the tones of the statue of Memnon. 

* Mahomet is said to have travelled over Allah's nose during 
ninety days, while receiving the revelations of the Koran, 



ffl&aumaturgug, 4 J 

That once 'twixt Eagle's pounces squeaked, 
Thence fell, while all Parnassus shrieked ; 
For the squab reptile, mailed in horn, 
Crushed pale Melpomene's eldest born. 
So Pallas shriek'd, when the proud power 
Of Venice* hurled war's iron shower 
O'er Athens, and one impious shell 
On her time-honour' d temple fell, 
Shivered the dome, attain'd the hearth anon, 
Then roll'd and ravaged the proud Parthenon, 
Pitting with cavities, like pigeon-holes, 
The busts of Phidias's originals. 
Your mortar-shells are used to thump roofs ; 
My Tortoise proved Bards' skulls no bomb-proofs- 
Breaching the horn-work of his head, 
It struck old iEschvlus stark dead. 



* Under Mprosim. 
D 2 



42 ©Jmumaturgitij. 



Mnte to Nature. 

I might — it is not in reproof meant — 
Help Nature's sage self to improvement : 
Thus man's first masticators, ' whilJc teeth 
(JVhilk 's which in Scottish) we call" milk teeth/' 
By my suggestion should survive 
To life's half-^#y-house, thirty-five ; 
Then sapp'd by mercury, mined by sweets, 
Carious from tartar or hot meats, 
While they in gradual tontine drop, 
A second, as substantial, crop 
Should on the gum's red esplanade 
Renew the bony balustrade. 
Again : were from hard knocks his shin saved, 
Man would be from a load of sin saved, 
Twitch but that painful spot, alas ! he'll 
Curse like a Roman planting Basil. 



®£aumatur£ti£. 43 

Of Nature's journey-work corrector, 

I give a simple shin protector, 

Let her, when fabricating more legs, 

Place all men's calves upon their fore legs ; 

To save the shin, each calf, placed thus on, 

Will form a most commodious cushion. 



©eeUs of Begluttttom 

To prove, in brief, my powers surprising 
Of guzzling and of gormandizing, 
Here's an example — who can match it ? 
I'll eat a Mammoth — if you'll catch it. 
Take, redolent of turf, and flowing 
From the sly stills of Innishowen, 
Of pure Poteen — nectareous stuff) 
Sweet as stolen kisses — quantum suff 



44 ©aumaturijttS. 

To qualify, to make Hell merry, 

The Devil's deep Punch Bowl* kept in Kerry, 

Sweetners and Spoons are call'd for quick — lo ! 

Toss the twin " Sugar Loaves of Wicklow" f 

In the strong tide — together screw 

Of Ireland's Tow'rsij: the tallest two, 

Hollow and high, nought ranks before 'em, 

To form a muddler for the jorum. 

That bowl — that plumbless pond of punch, 

Meet diluent to my Mammoth lunch, 

The crater' d hill can scarce contain it^ 

Still — if you'll hand it me — I'll drain it. 



* A Lake near the summit of Mangerton Mountain, County 
Kerry, which the natives pretend to be unfathomable. — Bushe 
says, " this pool being supplied by an inexhaustible spring, 
may be, and was consequently, compared to the bowl of punch 
round which a party was assembled, into the bottom of which 
Satan inserted an invisible spring, imperceptibly recruiting the 
continued decrease of the liquor within." 

f Two mountains, so called, forming very striking features 
in the scenery of Wicklow. 

| The Round Towers, 



©it nu&fa&i 



dfisl)ing <3tav. 

In those dread days, when news ran icholly on 
The means and measures of Xapoleon, 
I left mad Europe to its wrangling, 
And went in peaceful mood an angling. 
My Rod, a trunk of giant girth, 
The nursling of volcanic earth,* 
Was "forced" 'midst Bronte's lava grottos — 
Red Etna served it as a hot-house, 
Its hollowed stem received of yore 
Brydone, Recupero, and Ho are, 



* The great M Chesnut Tree of a hundred horses," growing 
on Mount Etna. 



46 2Tijattmaturgug. 

Queens, Quidnuncs, Bandits, and their horses ; 
Those who took notes, these who took purses, 
Here crack'd their bottles, and its best nuts, 
And made this monarch tree of chesnuts, 
" Di cento cavalli Castagno" 
By turns a bivouac and a bagnio. 

The spear and ferule, which this rod 
Ts fitly arrn'd with, hooped and shod, 
Were forged, by a peculiar process, 
From ancient Rhodes' wide-legg*d Colossus ; 
The skull alone uninjured lingers — 
I tweak' d its nose off 'twixt my fingers : 
Art borrowed from the nasal ridges 
The hint for framing metal bridges, 
Such as o'er sundry streams across go ; — 
One nostril forms the Bell of Moscow. 

I stretcu'd the hemp that forms mv line, a- 
-long the wide, wondrous Wall of China, 



Twelve wains abreast can on its cope walk — 

I made the parapet my rope- walk, 

That line has posed the strongest jaws, Sirs — 

Its " strands" were twisted from the hawsers 

That had long wrestled with thejierce seas, 

Connecting the pontoons of Xerxes. 

What Galleass, Carrack, Bucentaur, 

Or Argosy, for trade or war, 

Rivals the Cyclad* Ship ! — her frame is 

Equal to fifty tall Triremes ; 

From forty banks, a thousand " sweeps" f 

Propell'd her through the labouring deeps ; 

Her anchor, of a single fluke, 

Forms for Leviathans my Hook. 

And, e'en to frame my simple reel, 

I seized Ixion's restless wheel. 



* Built by Archimedes for Hierro. Wood sufficient for 
fifty galleys was expended on her construction. These huge 
vessels were called Cyclades or Mtnse. 
f Sweeps— the great oar of galleys, plyed by several hands, 



48 €£aiMTatttrsu& 

The Bait which hangs my fish-hook's point on, 
Is a colossal Mastodonton, 
Mueh huger than the hugest .E-lephant 
That e'er browzed jungle shrubs in the Levant, 
Or (a decoy but rarely used here) 
The carcase of an Irish Moose-deer, 
Whose antlers — 'tis not an invention — 
Are twice ten fathoms in expansion. 



I moored my bark, and plunged my bait 
Far in Magellan's tortuous strait : 
Whilst trolling there, 'twixt day and dark, 
I hook'd a most voracious shark, 
And, anxious quickly to inspect him, 
Instructed Toby to dissect him. 
Of such Dan Pliny dares to tell ye, 
Who had a Soldier in his belly ; 



©JaumatuvcjttS. 49 

My fish must have been vastly larger — 
He'd pouch' d a Warrior and his Charger ; 
A monster man, whose buckler could do 
The work of an entire Testudo ; 
His length exceeded, by a perch or 
Two, the fossil bones which Kircher* 
Allots to Patagonian Pallas, 
Whom fierce King Turnus, in his malice, 
Despatch' d in fight, as poets tell, 
To drill Nick's grenadiers in Hell ; 
He — measuring some few score of metres- 
Might peer with ease above St. Peter's, 
Whose dome — which could not be a light cap- 
Would scarce have served him for a night-cap; 
For he, when living, used that big block, 
The Sphynx of Egypt, as his wig-block. 



* Kircher asserts, that the bones of Pallas were found near 
Rome in his time, and his stature ascertained to have been so 
great, that he could have overlooked the highest walls of the 
citv. 



SO €6aumaiurgtt£. 

Before the harbour's mouth of Bona, 

I kill'd the landlord Whale of Jonah ; 

He was, as antiquaries wish, 

A very venerable fish, 

Known, from Gibraltar's Straits to Behring's, 

As an alarm-word 'mongst the herrings. 



Of old, in Afric's arid regions, 
A huge Snake check'd Rome's stoutest legions ; 
And as their arms could do him no hurt, 
Just made one mouthful of a cohort — 
Till, hurled from Catapult, a stone 
Struck the strong spine and crush' d the bone ; 
This feat was (though historians may gull us) 
Achieved by famed Field-marshal Regulus : 



High in the Capitol the skin he 
Hung up — 'twas measured there by Pliny. 
Rome, blot away these classic wonders 
From thy prolific page of blunders ; 
Or own thyself, direct and candid, 
Unfit to meet me single-handed. 
I've slain a Snake — I love comparisons- 
Would scare your field-force, fleets, and garrisons, 
Which, match' d with your's, would have surpass'd it 

So far they should be thus contrasted: 

A cock-boat to the ark of Noah, 

A " hair-born elver" * to a Boa ; 

Queen Mab's wand to Alcides' baculum ; 

A Rraken-j- to his least tentaculum. 

Whilst I pursued my angling chase, in 

To the unfrozen Polar basin, 

In half the time I've spent in scribbling, 

I felt the great Sea-Serpent nibbling ; 

* A small eeL f Pontopiddan. 



52 (ZTJaumaturgu*. 

Gave him (lest all he'd run away with) 
A hundred leagues of line to play with ; 
Scourged by his tail, huge icebergs spun 
Like tops, by schoolboys lashed in fun. 
His gory jaws discharged a flood, 
Vast as the Amazon, of blood, 
Which, daggling far and wide the shed snow, 
Accounts for Captain Ross's red snow ; 
And as I coax'd him towards the dry land, 
He twined his body round an island — 
One whisk sufficed me to unwreath him ; 
I popp'd my landing-net beneath him, 
And flayed, upon my groaning gabbard, 
His tough shagreen, to make my scabbard. 
Then, while yet wriggling in the toils, 
Wound his lithe length in spiral coils, 
Much like, when braced with bands of cable, 
In size and shape, thy tow'r, O Babel ! 
And fashion' d just as your Fishmongers 
Are wont to " collar" Eels, call'd Congers, 



Citfumatttrsug, 53 



JHermattJ. 

I oxce, while making with my seine a 
Mere random haul, off St. Helena, 
Took that apocryphal and rare maid, 
Whom modern mortals style a Mermaid ; 
A buxom nymph, half fish, half human — 
Her cheeks had all that lovely bloom on, 
Which golden-hair' d Aurora gave, 
When her first day-beams kiss'd the wave; 
She dinn'd my ears with Attic Greek, 
Glib as our land-born damsels speak, 
And I pursued her through the aorists, 
The most inquisitive of querists. 
Maids of all sorts are prone to coax men, 
She had bewitch'd the first of spokesmen— 
Demosthenes was long her suitor, 
Yea, and her literary tutor ; 



54 ©baumaturgtts. 

Greek to the waves he used to gabble hard — 

She play'd Eloisa to his Abelard ; 

And as the Archon was a pet of her's 

Soon conn'd by rote his tropes and metaphors. 

Her great longevity I imagine was 

Due to her structure cartilaginous.* 

And from that gownsman and this jic/cle lass 

Sprang, by descent, u II Pesce Nicholas " f 

Amphibious man, he loved t' abide 

In the dark depths of ocean's tide ; 

Whence rising, 'midst Trinacrian rocks, again > 

He charged his lungs' large lobes with oxygen. 

Inspiring at one draught, they tell us, 

A day's munition for his bellows. 



* Animals so constructed are known to be particularly long- 
lived ; some go so far as to think that certain species of fish, 
on this account, are only accidentally mortal. 

f The Diver Nicholas, styled " II Pesce." He plyed, as a 
sort of aquatic post-boy, between Naples and the Island of Si- 
cily — lived whole days in the water, and perished in attempt- 
ing to recover a gold cup, flung by King Ferdinand into the 
vortex of Charybdis. 



■ 



With digits webi/cL his limbs seem'd all fins- 
lie prank' d 'midst porpoises and dolphins, 

Till gull'd, to seek the golden guerdon and 
Imperial smile of tyrant Ferdinand. 
He dared Charybdis' dreadful womb- 
Lost the poor prize, and found a tomb. 

Eusebius (if alive) would smile at 
My Sea-Maid's hoax of the old Pilot, 
Who heard — Isle Pax as being to leeward — 
Her deep-toned voice, directed seaward. 
Cry u Thaumous, when thou readiest shore, 
u Announce, the mighty Pax \s no more !' ; 
When the astounding tidings spread, 
Prince, Priests, and People quaked with dread ; 
And this brief phrase of fear and mystery 
Caused the first " Panic'"* known to history. 



* There are various opinions respecting the derivation of the 
word i; Panic." This supernatural announcement, taking 

E 



56 CDaitmaiursug, 

Eheu ! whilst coasting Madagascar, 
The Coxswain, a salacious Lascar, 
One of those dogs who dive for pearl, 
Eloped with my aquatic Girl. 



into account the alarm produced by it, furnishes, perhaps, as 
plausible an etymology as any that has been hazarded. 



8fye €a*nmr0iij 



Sojourning once at Ispahan, 

I met with a mysterious Man, 

One who, through twice nine hundred ages, 

Communed with Sinners, Saints, and Sages. 

In each variety of clime, 

Yet seem'd but rising to his prime ; 

Robust of limb, and sound of cranium— 

He lived expecting the Millennium. 

Proud of the interview — I held, 

With this clear-sighted Seer of Eld, 

Historic converse, close and long ; 

Found his lore deep, and memory strong 

He rivall'd — you'll forthwith suppose so— 

Me, as a first-rate Virtuoso, 
e 2 



58 €|)3Uttiatur$u£. 

And oped, with many strained verbosities, 
His cabinet of curiosities ; 
Then, full of the rare exhibition, 
Defied me to a competition. 



CoIU Collation— J^altness of ti)t Bt& 

His Viands* gave him scope to gabble on ; 
Brawns from the magazine of Babylon, 
Preserved by processes so clever, 
He swore that they'd hold sweet for ever,f 
Yet stared when I gave, to ensure them, 
Salt from Lot's Wife, that he might cure them ; 
For altho' RadzivilleJ had sought 
In vain the relics of Dame Lot, 



* Albeit these are confessedly strange articles of virtu. 
+ Meat was preserved in Magazines of Babylon for some 
hundreds of years. 

% Radziville, Palatine of Wilna, in the course of his travels - 



/ 



C&aumaturgug. 59 

The Dead Seas tides still round her chafe, as 

In by-gone days of old Josephus ; 

And saline sweats, from her limbs trickling, 

Are now, as then, that lake bepiekling. 

So strongly doth the salt impregnate 

Its wave, that — did it storm or stagnate— 

CarraciolPs buoyant trunk 

Beneath the surface ne'er had sunk.* 

I learn' d, indeed, from old Xamolxest 
How all the great seas became salt seas — 



endeavoured, without success, to discover some remains of the 
Pillar of Salt into which Lot's Wife had been metamorphosed, 
and which Josephus asserts to have existed in his day. The 
modern natives of the neighbourhood, being either more in- 
dustrious or more fortunate than their predecessors, exhibit the 
relics of the statue. 

* " The body of Carracioli, rose to the surface of the sea, 
into which it had been thrown after his execution at Xaples, 
although shot weighing upwards of 2001bs. still continued at- 
tached to itS'-Southey's Life of Nelson. It was long thought that 
the human body could not sink in the waters of the Dead Sea. 

f " The primeval inhabitants of Moldavia believed in the 
incarnation of the Divinity in the person of a man, named Xa- 






60 CJatnnaturgu*. 

He had the story from Paul Lucas* — 
Paul pump'd Asmodeus of the true cause — 
Asmodeus gave it as it ran 
In Vishnou's gospel-book, the Phran : 
Neptune — in Sanscrit styled Khoy-Khauder — 
(His oceans erst were all fresh water) 
Squabbled with Aughust, an Infernal, 
—The effect of their ill-blood 's eternal — 
The Demon proved the God's chastiser ; 
—This Aughust was a Septembrizer — 
Stretching his length o'er swamp and sand-hill, 
From Table- Bay to Babelmandel, 
He used the strait there as a tundish — 
(Like Rahu ? t he'd have made but one dish 



molxes, who affected to be endowed with eternal life. From 
him the country was called Molla-div-ia, or the territory of 
the immortal Priest.' ' 

* Paul Lucas, according to his own account, held a con- 
ference with the Daemon Asmodeus, in Upper Egypt. 

f The planet Rahu is said, in the Birman Mythology, to 
take the Sun or Moon into his mouth, and thus to occasion 
eclipses. 



djaumaturgus. 61 

Of Sun and Moon) — and the Phran saith, 

Pausing not once for ruth or breath, 

He gulped — 'twas a prodigious potion — 

At once the tides of every ocean ; . 

Then strutting by th' exhausted pool-edge, 

He showed King Khoy he still had " ullage/' 

In his deep-cistern' d interior, 

For Lakes Ontario and Superior ; 

Anon, with swag paunch and phiz surl'd, 

Perked on the " back-bone of the World,"* 

In pity to the sea-tribes finny, 

He pass'd the w T aters bright and briny, 

And simply used to pour them forth 

From East to West, from South to North, 

Each current to its pristine station— 

The Gulliverian operation, 



* The Lapata Mountains in Africa, called the " Spine of 
the World." 



62 C&aumaturcju*. 

This — maugre chronologic baldness — 
Is the true cause of Ocean's saltness. 

'Tis said, that when a raid* of Janissaries 
The regions won from Greece or Venice harries, f 
The greedy dogs (who leave no wrecks of 
The fatted fowls they Ve wrung the necks of) 
Levy, by persecutions piteous, 
A tax, as wages for their teeth use. % 
Certes, were they condemn' d to mumble 
My Rival's Babylon brawns, a grumble 
At food so fibrous and unfriable, 
Might, in good sooth, be justifiable ; 
For viands that could pose Time's gnawing 
Must laugh at teeth a human jaw in. 



* Raid, an incursion, f Harry to plunder. — Scottish. 
X Vide Lady Montague's Letter to the Abbot of Adrian 
ople, 



I. who of salt meats ne'er took any t 
Joined to the pic nic bceaf houcane* 
Carved in its native state of beef-steak, 
Quite a la mode that Tartar thieves take. 
When every fierce and famished rough fellow 
Cuts his raw ration from the Buffalo, 
And then, with apathy amazing. 
Drives the poor victim forth a-grazmg.t 
My sabre scalp' d — nought could be bolder— 
This slice from the Behemoth''.: shoulder. 
Gigantic Brute ! in whose formation 
Jove spent the sixth day of creation. % 
He crops at noon a thousand mountains, 
Drains Jordan to its headmost fountains ; 



* Beef preserved by being dressed and smoked according to 

to the method practised by the Buccaneers, who derived their 
nom de guerre from the process. 

t Bruce.— Rabbi Benjamin also, who travelled in the I2tl 
century, says that - : the Copheral Turks devour the flesh torn 
from beasts yet alive.'' 

I Taken literally from the Talmud, 



64 Ciwumaturgti*. 

For him next night the torrent flows again, 

And in like space the herbage grows again : 

Spitted before earth's final fire, he 

Will furnish, on the dies ir<r. 

A banquet in the vale Jehosaphat — 

Those who can't taste, will have a loss of it. 

Tho' never board, from Thames to Carron, 

Sustain* d of beef so brave a baron, 

We'll have (being solely for the righteous) 

There of this magnvs bos but light use ; 

My task, I fear, will not be weighty, 

Though I sit Croupier on that great day. 



To give a zest, the Stranger tickles 
My palate with exotic Pickles, 



'Mongst which (their flavour 's known to few lip?) 

Were bulbs of some Imperial Tulips,* 

Of which a single root, if healthy, 

Would make a Burgomaster wealthy 

Anon, officious Toby serves 

Cases containing my Preserves : 

Assyrian quince, Armenian apricot, 

Raisins from the Arsacid grapery got, 

Dried from the clusters that were mellow'd in 

Times of the " cut-throat Sheik/'t and Saladin ; £ 

And eke, enshrined in sacch'rine cell, 

Th' identic apple pierced by Tell ; 

'Twas garnished round with candied chippings, 

By Herc'les pared from "golden pippins/'' 

Plucked in the orchards of th' Hesperides — 

He'd "boxed the fox" there in his merry days. 

* " During the Tulip mania in Holland, a root worth £1,000 
was eaten by a sailor, in mistake for an onion." — Beckmann, 

f " The Old Man of the Mountain," Chief of the Arsacid©, 
whose romantic history is so well known, 

% Three of the devotees of the infamous sect of Arsa- 
eida? fell by the hand of Saladin, whom they attempted to 



60 €2tfitmatitrsii& 



0autt Pquante, 

I then regaled the Stranger'sjfe/c^s 
With the most rich of ancient sauces, 
Doled out, lest its high sapor sate him, 
As Cockney Doctors say, " gutMim ;" 
Yea, trickling from my niggard cruet. 
Fell lingering drops of that rare fluid, 
Which erst, in gastromanic rage, 
The Master- Droll of Rome's old stage, 
— To outdo kings, in luxury's sin, eager — 
Obtain'd, by solving gems in vinegar, 
(The same that Hannibal, in fountains, 
Had used for mollifying mountains,)* 

" assassinate," at the instigation of Kamscheglin, Minister of 
Al Malek. 

* Livy, lib. xxi. cap. 37. Walker, in his notes, says, " Mi» 
rum sane unde Hannibali tarda aceti copia in Alpibus" Thauma- 
turgus, in order to settle the question as to the point at which 
the Carthaginian General crossed the Alpine ridge, decides 
that this mollifying operation was performed upon the cliffs that 



Ci)aumatunju£. G7 

Then gulped — the Gourmand's name was Esop— 
At once the gain of half his days up. 



21Eon^ers of Waters. 

Cordials of every tinge and body, 
Araki, Tari, Koumiss, Toddy, 
In gills from the quick- circling rummer, 
We quaff' d — " one swallow makes no summer,'' 
My Rival wished his beverage weaker, 
And, to dilute it, brimmed his beaker 
With water drawn in Athos' tunnel, * 
Where Xerxes' galley bathed its gunnel ; 
Then, chuckling, showed his exultation 
T' have proved that doubted excavation. 

barred the passes of the Alpis Graia^ or Little St. Bernard. Ge- 
neral Melville, De Luc, and the Edinburgh Reviewer, possess 
the merit of having entertained the same opinion. 
* " Perforatus Athos et quicquid Greecia Mendax 
" Audet in historia." — 



68 dwumatttrgus, 

'Twas seen instanter that my cruises 
Held liquids dear to Men and Muses ; 
One flask was filled with aqua pura, 
Sucked from snow-nippled " Paps of Jura. ,, 
Fools say, that to such streams as this is 
The Cretins, and some septs of Swisses, 
Owe all their goitre-garnished faces — 
They deem a wen the first of graces. 

The water I adfect for lotions, 
And use unfiltered in my potions, 
Is caught in droppings from that scarce tree- 
Growth of Hierro's Isle — the Garse-tree, 
Which, blooming on an arid mountain, 
Yields, as a vegetable fountain, 
In genial dews drawn from the skies, 
Drink which the dry-nurse Earth denies. 
Dank mists its verdant vertex shroud, 
The lance-leaved branches broach the cloud, 



djauinaturgus. 69 

And the pure element distils 
Down trickling in a thousand rills— 
As if old Notas, sung by Maro, 
Chose for his roosting-place Hierro, 
Shook his wet wings, and kempt his hair, 
And wrung his reeking whiskers there, 

For many an age " the fount that played 
In times of old through Amnion's shade/'' 
By Turk or traveller vainly sought. 
Was deemed a fairy fiction, wrought 
By History's Grandsire, till the hour 
When, armed with more than Bleton's* power, 
I paced, with sympathetic tread, 
Above the spring's conjectured bed. 
Felt of affinity the thrill 
My sensate frame bore to the rill : 



* The famous discoverer of subterraneous springs and wa- 
ters by sympathy. — Literary Journal, published at Bouillon, 



70 ftganmaturgu*. 

A subtile aura from the well 

Doth permeate the terrene shell, 

And, floating round my footsteps, brings 

Strange knowledge of those viewless springs. 

Which, hid from vulgar mortals, sleep 

In native basins, dark and deep. 

Led by this sense, I traced the course 

Of the Fons Solis — reached the source, 

And, through th' authentic ancient shaft, 

Thence quafTd— ('twas eve) — a tepid draught 

Flowing by fall'n fanes of the God, it does 

Confirm the tale of old Herodotus.* 

This brimming '" bardak"f which 1 drew, 

To the Fount's mystic virtues true, 



* " Supposing the temperature of the Fountain to have been 
60° in the evening, it might be 100° at midnight. This does 
not altogether accord with Herodotus, who says that the water 
is cold at noon and midnight, but warm in the morning and 
evening. We have, however, to recollect that he was only 
told of the phenomenon." — Belzoni. 
f Earthen vessels, made at Minieh in Upper Egypt, and used 
to keep water cool. 



Ciftumatursu*, 71 

Pours a meridian stream, as chill 
As x\rctic iceberg's snow-born rill ; * 
Its nocturn wave, to seeth or scald, runs 
Hot as the gush from Geyser'sf cauldrons : 
Sol steals, while Luna yields, caloric ; 
Or — take an illustration Doric— 
The spring m "Amnion's Elloah" hid, might 
Make grog at noon and punch at midnight, 



mints— Bloc$ Qi tfje 0teim, 

An ample magnum flask, that hung 
From his scrip belt, th' Unknown unslung ; 
And, while his liberal hand outpour'd 
The large libation o'er the board, 



* " At noon the water was quite cold." — Bekoni. 
f The boiling springs of Iceland, 



72 Cijaumatiu'sud' 

With bearing high, and tone of pride, 

And soul exhilarate, he cried — 

" Where the *Birs' Alpine torrents toil, 

" By fair St. James's holy pile, 

" And pour, with ever- murmuring wave, 

" Perennial requiem to the Brave, 

" Who for Helvetia fought and fell— 

" Fame speaks how gloriously and well — 

" The teeming vine-trees' leech-roots drain 

ie The arteries of the warrior-slain ; 

" And when, by Autumn's zephyrs fanned, 

" Rich fruitage woos the gatherer's hand, 

" To sound of tabor, pipe, and drum, 

" The patriot Switzers mustering come, 



*This spot is consecrated by the heroism of 1,500 Swiss , 
who checked here the invading army of Louis XI. amounting 
to many thousands. Of the Swiss only 16 survived ; and these, 
in the manner of the Spartans, were branded by their country- 
men with infamy for abandoning the Held. In commemoration 
of the action, the inhabitants of Basle assemble periodically at 
the Convent of St. James, to drink a wine called t4 Blood of the 
Swiss," produced from vines growing where the Patriots felL 



C&aumaturgu*. 71 

" Crush die ripe clusters, redly glowing 3 

" And drink, with cups and hearts o'erflowing,— 

" Whilst more than filial love inspires— 

u The memory of their Spartan Sires. 

u To taste that spirit-stirring wine, 

" ( Blood of the Swiss/ I breathed— a Vine ! 

•- And from its purple gushing caught 

" This juice, with generous impulse fraught, 



iHalmsej)— |3|)tleta8— #])lpTjtum # 

My Cases came — I crack'" d a bottle ; 
A legend, compassing its throttle, 
Pronounc'd it (sanctioned by its tint, age, 
And flavor,; Malmsey, of the vintage 
That Clarence* chose, as History saith, 
To prove his " passion strong in death.'' 

* The only favour granted him was the choice of hi? death f 
and he was privately drowned in a butt of Malmsey, in the 

F 2 



74 C&anmaturgu*. 

Illustrious Epicure ! La a canal 

To drown, would shame a Royal Bacchanal : 

Flies, in Madeira merged, revive — 

P'rhaps this induced the Duke to dive. 

My Goblet was the Fool's-cap leaden 

That old Philetas* moord his head in. 

Why w T as his cranium thus enchaliced ? 

He carried much more sail than ballast, 

And thinking Earth's attraction frangent, 

Fear'd he'd drift mo onward in a tangent : 

While hiccup'd now my second cork, 

Th' Unknown " w T ished for the throat of stork, f 

And palate all its length." — Perfume 

Of highest " bouquet" thro' the room 

Rose lightly odorous : - — I'd shewn 

This wine "the Pr^'leged'' drank alone — ■ 

Tower — a whimsical choice, which implies that he had an ex- 
traordinary passion for that liquor. — Hume. 

* Philetas, the Grammarian, according to iElian, carried 
lead on his person, lest he should be swept away by the winds, 
f Prayer of an ancient Epicure, improved by Foote. 



€$attttiatftr$t& 75 

Rich Sylphiuni* 'twas, of that rade Roman, 
"Czar" Maxim inius, with whom no Man 
Dare, in his day, affect to cope or 
Corps, as a Bruiser or a Toper ; 
'Twas fill'd in anrphorce^ befitting 
Him who'd exhaust one at a sitting. 



Deep drinking this — yet mine far flogs it ; 
Toby at hob-nob swills a hogshead. 
Once, when some bastard sons of Bacchus 
Dared, in wild wassail, to attack us, 
To win the Whistle of Glenriddle ; f 
My clench' d fist struck the Tun of ^Heidle- 

* Sylphium, a wine of such cost, that, under the sumptuary 
laws, it could not be purchased without the permission of the 
magistrates. 

f Drank for in Scotland periodically. — Burns* Poems, 

I Containing- 800 hogsheads, and kept constantly full of 
Rhenish wine. 



76 CJaumatttrgu*. 

-berg, and projected from its socket 
The broad bung, like a Congreve rocket. 
Let mean Athletes with Milo wrestle — 
I heaved aloft the mountain vessel, 
And gorged at one draught, stretch'd supine^ 
Its inland sea of mighty wine, 
Till the vast void rang to my ear, 
Like Troy's horse 'neath Lacoon's spear.* 
Thus, having drain'd th' abyss of drink out, 
And put each tiny Toper's link out, 
I stood astride — being mildly mellow- 
Across a prostrate wine-logg'd fellow, 
A Scot— I ken'd him by his Thistle — 
And blew a flourish thro' the Whistle ; 
Each glass was shivered on the table, 
The house was rent right thro' the gable. 
The passing birds that wing'd the wind 
Dropp'd, deafenM, paralized, and blind ; 



-" uteroque recusso 



Insonuere cava2."- 



(EJaumatHrgus. 77 

So erst the shout of Athens'" crowd? 
Unnerv'd Jove's Eagles in the clouds : * 
The church-bells pealed with hurried stroke, 
Graves yawn'd — the very dead awoke, 
Whilst Prince and Peasant, Saint and Strumpet, 
Sprang forth— convinced 'twas the last trumpet. 



€dHiUmtion. 

Th' Unknown, in our refined refections, 
Shewed, from his Manuscript collections, 
Gems writ ere pens in gallf were dipt. — I 
Avowed the Codices Rescrvpti, 



* When Flaminius gave liberty to Greece, such an acclama- 
tion arose, that the very birds fell from heaven. " Ferrari de 
ritu veterum acclamationibus et plausu." — Plutarch. 

f Sir H, Davy suggests, from the nature of the ink in the 
Papyri MSS. and the silence of Pliny, that up to the period 
of the destruction of Herculaneum, the Romans never used 
galls and iron as a writing ink ; and probably this invention 
was contemporary with parchment, of which the earliest MSS-. 



78 Cliauitiaturgiig. 

Tho* stained by "styles" in learning's chaster day. 

Compared to these, were works of yesterday. 

He proved one scrip by a shrewd gloss, a 

True autograph of Queen Atossa ; 

That female Damsel* he'd contend, 

Wrote the first letter ever penn'd. 

The gloss »was all his own — in troth, 

He had more lore than any Goth.f 

tire I touch'd topics more important, 

T gave a practical and short hint, 

That Dame AtossaJ should be reckoned, 

At best, of letter-scribes but second ; 



at present known are the Codices Rescripti, discovered at 
Rome and Milan by M. Mai. 

* This word applies to either sex. Pepin was styled the 
«* Damsel." 

t The Goths were highly distinguished for genius and learn- 
ing, — Jornandes. 

\ Clemens Alexandrinus, and Tatian also, who copies from 
Hellanicus, the historian, affirm that the first epistle ever com- 
posed was the production of Atossa, a Persian Empress. — 
Many suppose that the letter Homer's Preetus gave to Bellero- 
phon, preceded the letter of Atossa. 



«Et>aumatttr<ju£. 19 

Her's was indited, as I knew. 

In answer to the billet doux 

Of a Shaky springed in Cupid's rat-trap— 

I shewed the poidet of the Satrap, 

Anterior e'en to that, in date, is 

King Praetus' note to Iobates, 

Urging the last to act as Sheriff on 

The Heathen Joseph, chaste Bellerophon ; 

He was a gullible knight-errant, 

Who rode post with his own death-warrant. 

I drew this scrip from my portfolio, 

Which boasts a rich and varied olio. 

The rarest scriptural reliques 

Of Jews, Chaldees, Phoenicians, Greeks, 

Were met in ihoX port-feuille prolific ; 

The Uncial text — the Hieroglyphic — 

*And that which posed the rambling rabble on 

Hillah's quench' d brick-kilns, now call'd Babylon ; 

* The cunei-formed letters on tiles at Hillah, 



SO €&aumaturgug. 

As a mere Potter's field is shewn 

The "Mujelib"*— the " Overthrown," 

In some the text was perpendicular — 

Some horizontal — some orbicular, f 

A style confined to things befitting it — 

Ancient " round-robins" were all writ in it. 

The Sybil Prophecies, array'd on 

The u to and fro style/' Boustrophedon, 

Suggest th' hypothesis— I hint it — 

That all who read her scriptures squinted. 

Hogarth ! — what a coup d'ceil, a feast of her's ! 

Strabo ; J no doubt, was a High Priest of her's. 

* A figurative name given by the natives to the ruins of 
Hillah. — Ker Porter. 

f " Le Pere Hugues a fait representer vingt-quatre manieres 
d'ecrire, * * * Ont peut reduire a trois especes, celles qui ont 
ete d'usage : l'ecriture perpendiculaire, l'ecriture horizontale, 
et l'ecriture orbiculaire. * * Quant a l'ecriture orbiculaire, elle 
ne fut peut-etre jamais d'un usage suivi chez aucun peuple. II 
y eneut cependant selon Pausanias et selon Maffei." 

{ " If you please to compare the Roman names that seem 
so stately, because you understand them not, you will disdain 
them in respect to our meanest names. For what is Strabo, 
but Squint-eye ; Fronto, but Beetle-browed ; Cassius, but 



Cbaumaiursug. ^1 



I caught th' Unknown's eye now o'erlooking 

My unique copy of the Shoo- King,* 
Beheld him, in amazement mute, see 
The great book of the great Cox-fute-see : 



Cat's-eyes ; P;etus, Pink-eyed ; Cocles, One-eye ; Naso, 
Bottle-nose; Galea, Maggot, (as Suetonius interpreted) ; 
Silo, Ape's-nose; Ancus, Crooked-arm; Pansa, Broad-foot; 
Suillius, Swine-eared; Capito, Jobbernoll; Calvus, Eald- 
pate ; Crispus, Curl-pate ; Flaccus, Loll-ears, or Flag- 
eared ; Labeo, Blubber-lip ; Scavrus, Knobbed-heel ; Va- 
rus, Bow-legged ; Pedo, Long-shanks ; Marcellus, Ham- 
mer ; Cilo, Petty-longpate ; Chilo, Flap-lips ! Those great 
names also, Fabius, Lentulus, Cicero, Piso, Stolo, are 
no more in our tongue, than Bean-man, Lentil, Chick-peas, 
Peas-cod-man, Branch. For, as Pliny saith, these names were 
first appropriated to them for skill in sowing these grains. "— 
Camden. 

* fi The Shoo-King originally extended to 100 chapters. — 
These consisted of short sentences, which were then, as they 
are now, got by heart. After a lapse of sixty years, most of 
those who knew the Shooking were either dead or had lost the 
recollection of it. High rewards were offered for its recovery, 
and at leugth an old man, named Foo-seng, was discovered, 
who retained a considerable portion of it, From him the sub- 



82 ©fwutttaturgu*. 

x\ll the Loo transcript, lost by rot, 

Or " SenacAze"* Foo Seng forgot ; 

Corrupted passages, lacuna^ 

Or points minute, which, seeming puny, 

Would still — transposed in Chinese text — 

Render the clearest code perplex' d — 

Here stood restored ; for my collection 

Is perfect to the hundredth section. 

Who can appraise its worth in pelf ? 

'Twas writ by the sage CHEEf himself. 

If Europe's blundering Envoys took 

A copy of this priceless book, 

'T had won for Bell, De Lange, or Staunton, 

Free passage to Peking from Canton : 



stance of about twenty-nine books was obtained. Subsequent- 
ly, a Prince of Loo recovered the remainder of fifty-eight sec- 
tions, in the ruins of an old building." — Quarterly Review, 
Vol. XI. 

* Senachie, a Gaelic term for a class of persons whose pro- 
fession it is to hand down traditionally the history and institutes 
of their country. 

f The diminutive of Confucius. 



Lured by the prospect of such prize, 

Kien Lung, the wary Khan, and wise, 

Had issued his " celestial Chops"* 

To Men of " Sledges/' "Shrugs/' and "Shops' — 

And Knaves from Severn, Seine, and Bwina, 

Might cheat and chaffer through all China. 



These were mere skirmishers I threw 
In van — anon, pass'd in Review 
Th' Elite of all the precious volumes 
That crowd my shelves in deep close columns 
Brass-bound, with hieroglyph enamel, 
Stood first the "mighty book" of Flamel;f 



* Imperial passports. 
f The history of this Adept is, perhaps, better worth 
perusal than that of any other of his craft. His variou? 



8 J €f}aitmaturgu& 

Rare Tome ! — he bought it for ten stivers, 
Corm'd all its cabbala and ciphers. 
Palaces, Lazarettos, Churches, 
Rose from this talismanic purchase ; 
Who reads this work, ne'er at a loss is 
For the sublime, yet simple process, 
To make the substance Adepts hold 
Shall baser ores transmute to gold. 
When pulverized, if one prise settles 
On any of the minor metals, 
First, Mercury -like, it runs in bubbles, 
Then coins itself in good "Rose Nobles,"* 



and extensive religious and charitable foundations, many of 
which existed to the time of the French Revolution, prove 
that he was possessed of enormous wealth. We have his 
own authority for believing that he derived his riches from 
having become possessed of the Philosopher' s-stone and the 

Elixir, by accidentally purchasing, for a trifling sum, a book 
written in occult characters, the work of a deceased Jew, call- 
ed Abraham, in which the secrets were developed. 

* The old English Rose Noble, which the Rosicrucians as- 
sert to contain the least alloy of any coin ever struck, (in which, 

however, by the way, the comparative tables do not bear them 



C&mmiaturgu*. 80 

Moulded, and mill'd, and finished fully, 
As well as those of Raymond Lully, 
Whose pure alchemic gold, when "jixed^ 
Ranked o'er all bullion ever u pixed" 
This Book expounds the virtues mighty. 
Concocted in th' Elixir Vitte, 
A pinch or gill of which, in sooth, 
Confers eternal life and youth, 
'Tis not so grateful to the lip as 
Thy nostrum, likerish Hermippus ;* 



out,) is said to have been made of alchemic gold, by Raymond 
Lully, who was in his day very properly made Master of the 
Mint. 

* According" to an inscription found at Rome about three 
centuries ago : 

L. CLODIUS HERMIPPUS, 

VIXIT ANXOS CXV. DIES V. 

PUELX.AKUM ANHELITU. 

Hermip. Rediv. 

Mr. Thicknesse, in his Valetudinarian's Bath Guide, has 
these words : " I myself am now turned of sixty, and in gene- 
ral, though I have lived in various climates, and suffered se- 



86 €$cutmatut ( £u& 

Thou taught'st — by zephyrs caught, in kisses ? 

From budding lips of blooming Misses, 

The amorous (and the vital) spark shall 

Attain an age quite patriarchal. 

Prizing the breath of panting lasses 

Above all other airs or gases, 

I, true to thy receipt, have quaff'd 

The balmy and ethereal draught ; 

Yea, in such measure, of such quality, 

As gives exhilarate vitality, 

Which ne'er th' elastic " Nitrous Oxyde" * 

Could yield, inhaled e'en by the hogshead. 



verely in body and mind, yet, having always partaken of the 

breath of young women, I feel none of those infirmities that so 

often strike my eyes and ears in this great city, in men much 

younger than myself." 

" E'en give, with Tfiicknesse, useful hints for health, 
" For public good, tho ; not for private wealth ; 
*' Like him, to shun the cold embrace of death, 
c< Inhale, from virgin lips, ambrosial breath,'' 

Pursuits of Literature 

* Vulgo, the Laughing Gas. 



Cfcacumatursu*. 87 



Hardouin ! the libell'd and the learn'd, 
Receive, tho' late, the fame thou 'st earn'd; 
Resolved, from hence, no more to let you lie 
The mock of pedant Literatuli, 
Great Thaumaturge proves, in his ruth, 
Thy slighted theories* stark truth. 
Mute be, for aye, the sceptic scoffers — 
I now unlocked two antique coffers, 
Carved on whose lids, devices quaint — 
A Satyr here, and here a Saint — 
Tell they were wrought in classic climes, 
When Christian touch' d on Pagan times. 



* Hardouin maintained that the writings of the ancients were 
forged by Monks of the 13th century, with the exception of 
the works of Cicero, Pliny's Natural History, and the Georgics 
of Virgil. The iEneid he believed to be an allegorical de- 
scription of St. Paul's journey to Rome. 



88 &|>aumatiivgii£. 

Within, by my researches brought there, 

Of every ancient classic Author 

Was found — each in its proper pigeon-hole — 

The very autograph original ; 

And all the books lodged in those trunks, 

Deem'd Heathen erst, were writ by Monks.* 

This truth, long since, sage Hardouin had 

Promulged— the Age pronounc'd him mad ; 

And e'en th' Unknown, a shrewd and cool man, 

Called it the " reverie of a Schoolman." 

But when I give, as T unroll, 

A running scholium with each scroll, 

Thro' the mind's adits— ears and eyes — 

The lightning of conviction flies. 

I shew'd first — what the Bard would fain hide— 

" Fret' Virgil's rough draft of the iEneid. 



* The Monks are here thrown farther back than the time at 
-which Hardouin and others suppose them to have arisen. The 
general belief is that they originated with St. Anthony, A. D. 
305 ; others trace them to the Therapeutag, or Paul the Her- 
mit. 



€Itfumaturgus= 89 

Erasures, blots, and interlining^ 

Critical changes, and refmings, 

Parts left, in phrenzy, incornplet e,* 

(The heads of lines that w&ateHJeef,) 

Prove it th* original, the same 

The Bard> too chary of his fame,— 

According to that flippant liar, 

Tradition — doom'd to light the pyre, 

Whereon his honoured bones should burn 

u Al carbonado" for the urn. 

He flourish' d — but tfimporte in what reign ; 

As for the u Ille Ego" quatrain, 

And the terse argument above it, 

They're from the pen of u Brother" Ovid.f 

Hight " Nosey,"— Maro was his master — ■ 

Vet " Nosey" proved no Poetaster; 



* ki Dum scriberet, ne quid impetum moraretur, quedam 
imperfecta reliquit." 

t The Arguments to the Books of Virgil are by some at- 
tributed to Ovid. 

g2 



90 €2>aumaiurgit& 

He wrote both dolefully and drolly, 

But was, as Monk, more bpt than holy, 

In sooth, Propertius and Tibullus, 

Martial, Petronius, and Catullus, 

And other wanton-witted u Papas," 

From *"Fra" Anacreon to " Dom" Mapas,f 

Have tortured tenses, moods, and aorists, 

Either as amateurs or theorists. 

— Tho' raised to theologic benches — 

In praise of wine-bibbing and wenches. 

Though th* Unknown doubted, that the Muses 

Breath'd their warm works out thro' Recluses, 

Yet, feeling few can at their feasts sport 

Rough wines more racy than prime " Priest's Port/' 



* A French Wit, (alluding to Hardouin's hypothesis,) 
exclaimed, " I could wish to spend an evening with Fra Vir- 
gil and Dom Horace. 

f Walter de Mapes or Mapas, the jolly Chaplain of Henry 
II. to whom are attributed the well-known verses in praise of 
drinking, commencing — 

" Mihi est prop o si turn in taberna mori." 



He archly cried, " Your " Freres" in black cloth 
Love, like the old, Sack more than sackcloth.'' 
" Monks of the Screw"* who little note the 
Text, " Fr aires sobrii estote!' f 



Resolving still the learned mystery, 
The books of the Monk-Scribes of History, 
Cuird from their cells on Monte Santo, X 
I now, with hasty hand, began to 



• A celebrated Society, under this name, partly political 
and partly convivial, was formed in Dublin in 1779. John 
Philpot Curran, the first Prior of the Order, supplied the 
Brotherhood with a hymn, invoking them to abstinence and 
mortification, thus : — 

" My Biethren, be chaste, till you're tempted — 

Whilst sober, be wise and discreet ; 
And humble your bodies by fasting, 

As oft as you've nothing to eat." 

f Epist. Petri, c. 5, v. 8. Paul Harris. 

I Mount Athos, in whose monasteries many of the Clas&ic.^ 
were preserved. 



92 Cijaumaiurgu*. 

Expose, and to the wondering gazer 
Demonstrate the Gazettes of Caesar 
(His Commentary Book fools term it) 
To be the work of Peter th' Hermit. 
The Croises Muster-master-general — 
Whether his schemes did good to men, or ill, 
I shan't discuss — some bless, some curse him ; 
But, were his skull thumm'd by Dan Spurzheim, 

Altho' it might express sagaciousness, 

T' would lack the bump that marks pugnaeiousness, 

Certes, he was profoundly skill' d in 

The art and mystery of building. 

Had Pagan Rome seen his design, 

For march of war, to bridge the Rhine, 

- — In fost'ring merit none could beat her— 

She 'd made a Fontifex of Peter. 

Oft by his MSS. alone 
An Author's character is known ; 
And as these Monk- writ Classics pass'd, 
A glance upon each codex cast 



arjjaumatursus. 93 



Proved that— not only of his sense it is 
A test, but of the Scribe's propensities— 
In penmanship, whoever nourishes 
A taste for filagree and flourishes, 
Puts his own portrait on the paper, 
As given to gasconade and vapour. 
More of this system I'll not tell ye— 
See it at large in D' Israeli. 



Livy, complete thro' all the Decades, 
So long deemed lost by wise and weak heads, 
From a rich casket Arabesque 
I drew ; but scarce upon my desk 
Began, exulting, to unroll 
The rare and venerable scroll. 



94 Cijauinaturgttd. 

Wlidk the mysterious Stranger cries, 

In tones that spoke supreme surprise, 

" However sceptical till now, 

" Subdued to credence, I avow 

" This archetype's truth — I saw the tome 

" In the Historian's hand, at Rome. 

te Know," he exclaim'd, " that I am He 

" Who, scaling Alp and Pyrennee, 

u In the first century of my sad days, 

" Came to th' Imperial Town from Gades,* 

tc To see, to speak with, and embrace 

" The first of the historic race, 

" Livy I met — his eye sublime, 

" Withdrawn from retrospects of time, 

" With holy hope, fixed fervidly 

" On prospects of Eternity. 

u Garb'd in strange guise, no Toga rolFd 

u Round his spare form its flowing fold ; 

* The Unknown assumes to be the person whom Pliny men- 
iions as having travelled from Spain to Rome to see Livy. 



" His visage in deep coif was sunk ; 

" It was a Cowl — and he a Monk. 

" By grace especial, then I scanned 

" This codex, writ by his own hand : 

" Dissect his style — 'twill soon be seen it is 

" (Free from those vulgar ' PatavinitiesJ 

" Corruptions of a late Transcriber,) 

" The purest Latin used on Tiber. 

u Four times four ages, from that day, 

u Slowly and sadly pass'd away, 

" When I, condemn'd to spend in strife 

" An ultra-patriarchal life, 

" Beheld, with mix'd delight and pain, 

(i The precious volume once again : 

" Where ' seven-tower" d StambouF* frowns in pride 

" O'er Marmora's divorcing tide, 



* All the books of Livy were supposed to exist in the 
Library of the Seraglio, at Constantinople, at the beginning 
of the 17th Century, — Harlai, the French Ambassador, offer- 
ed 10,000 crowns for them, and the Duke of Tuscany as many 
piasters ; but they could not be discovered, when sought for. 



96 Ctwumaturgug. 

" From plunder of th' unletter'd Turk 

" I furtively secured the work; 

" And Christian Casuists will, I wager ye, 

" Applaud and justify this plagiary. 

u The Envoy from the Gallic Court, 

st Had just then proffered to the Porte, 

" In purchase of the book — the Ninny ! 

a Five thousand zermahbub zecchini.* 

" This caused a search : I, sore afraid 

a Of Bowstring, or the Bastinade, 

" Abandon'd Stamboul's minarets ; 

a Close at my heels, quick Estafettes 

" Of hardy and hard-riding Tartars 

" Bore proclamations to all quarters, 

" Describing my costume and look, 

" The rape of the high-valued book — 

" While Bashaw, Bey, — each local power, 

" Was charged to intercept the Giaour. 

* Anglice, " gingerly sequins 5 ' — worth about 9s. 6 d. English, 



C^aumaturijug. 97 

" My route was sedulously traced 

" O'er champaign, city, wave, and waste ; 

" Fever and fate while the sirocco 

" Breathed abroad, I reach' d Morocco. 

a Before the outer gate of Fez, 

" Barring evasion with his cress, 

" A Moor, whose eye was lit to ken a thief, 

" Seized me, a convict ' Hont-fongenathef,' * 

" And brought, in the chief Cadi's sight, 

" The Codex and my crime to light ; 

" Denounc'd there as a Christian dog, 

" They hasten'd to discalce and flog ; 

w But ere the Lictor loosed my socks, I 

" Appeal' d to proofs of orthodoxy, 

" Common, indeed, to Jews and Moslem, f 

" That served at once to sooth and puzzle 'em, 



* A thief taken with the booty upon him.— Old Law Dic- 
tionary, 

i Circumcision. 



98 €£autttaturgtt£. 

" Anon, the iVlcoran's * neck-verse' * I 
" Cited, which wins not only mercy, 
u But grace and guerdon, to the sinner, 
" (Tho* the slave spoil a Caliph's dinner.)f 
a How close Man's institutes converge ! — we 
u At Fez find * benefit of Clergy ;" 
u And I, deem'd subject for a catacomb, 
" Gain'd a free pardon and viaticum" 

Enough ! (I cried) — to the reign of Yezid 

Livy's great Work remain'd in Fez hid, % 

* " Shew mercy, do good to all." — Koran, cap. AlAraf. 

t The Caliph Hassan being- at table, a slave unfortunately let 
fall a dish of meat, reeking hot, which scalded him severely. 
The slave fell on his knees, and repeated the above words, 
adding (also from the Alcoran) " Paradise is for those who re- 
strain their anger," " I pm not angry with thee," replied the 
Caliph— 44 And for those who forgive offences." 44 I forgive 
thee thine," answered the Caliph — " But above all, for those 
who return good for evil." " I set thee at liberty," rejoins 
the Caliph, " and give thee ten dinars" (as a viaticum.) 

The " Miserere mei Deus," was called the Neck- verse, 
as the reading of it formed the qualification by which culprits 
availed themselves of benefit of clergy, 

J The Library of the 4 Caroubin.' or 4 Mosque of the Thou- 



When I, tli* unequall'd Thaumaturgus, 

Whiling away some days at Burgos, 

Met a Fez Monk, a Book Collector, 

Of Spain's Asylum there long Rector ; 

He had oft squatted on his croup, in 

The Moslem mode, in the * Caroubin," 

That, u after Mosque," perusal privy 

He might obtain of this same Livy. 

I sail'd — then reach' d, upon my Zebra, 

The Mosque of *■ Thousand Candelabra/' 

And of the work became enfeoff d — I 

Won it at Chess from the Chief Mufti ; 

From no mean brow the meed of skill I tore — 

'Twas he that once u check-mated'' Philidore.* 



sand Candelabra,' at Fez, was thought to contain all the Books 
of Livy. Doctor Hyde conceived that they might be found 
there, not in the original, but in the Arabic language : but 
Ali Bey, who has recently told us some amusing (i Tales of a 
Traveller," could not discover them. 

* He is believed to have suffered a fatal depression of spirits, 
in consequence of having been overcome at chess by a Turk in 
the suite of the Ambassador. 



100 €&aumattirgtt& 

I staked the Koran's sacred " Sowar/' * 

Given in the glorious u Night of Power," 

That sanction'd Mahmoud, at the Bairam, 

To add fresh Houris to his Harem, 

Tho* few Birds in the Serrails' cages 

E'er coo'd or kiss'd like his Khadejaz. 

These " Sowar," wherewith Turks are smitten, 

Were, by the Prophet, wholly written 

With quills from wings of swans nor geese won, 

But shed in Gabriel's moulting season. 



Gaelic tlje %m%m%t of Corner. 

I proved the classical inditers 
Mere Monks, tho' long deemed Heathen writers, 



* One of the Mahometan terms to express the chapters of the 
Alcoran. They are believed to be written with quills obtain- 
ed from Gabriel's wing, and to have been sent down from the 



Cfcuunaturgu*. J01 

By MSS. with which 'twere odd if I 
Might not (as Bentham styles it) codify. 
To shew my literary ubiquity. 
I now dived deeper in antiquity ; 
Produced the Epic ballads, sung 
By Homer, when the Muse was young, 
What language did the Poet speak ? 
The learned Unknown himself cries Greek, 
Tompion my ears from such responses ! 
Though all the tongues of all the Dunces 
Pronounce him and his writings Grecian, 
He knew no language, save Phoenician ; 
And though you'll hesitate admitting it, 
His matchless Epopee was writ in it, * 

highest heaven in the (i Night of Power" Mahomet affected 
to have had a special revelation, justifying him in augmenting 
the number of his women ; and appealed to the warm tempera- 
ment of his wife Khadejaz, and his own vigour, when press' d 
for a miracle in verification of his mission. 

* Parsons thinks that the works of Homer were originally 
written in the Pelasgian (which may be taken as the Phoeni- 
cian language), and " he supposes they did not reach Greece 
until Lycurgus, on his return from Asia, collected and brought 



102 €!jaumatttrjju& 

Thence, with elaborate skill, the work was 
" Done into Greek" by old Lycurgus, 
To Homer's Ossian the Macpherson ; 
I shewed th' original and version ; — 
This on papyrus tough, tho' thin- 
That on a Salamander's skin ; f 
Who doubts such creature e'er has been, he 
May learn the fact from Ben Cellini. J 



them with him ; and it is, he says, very likely that Lycurgus 
had some hand in translating Homer's works (into Greek H — 
for it is more than probable that he understood the Pelasgian, 
as he resided among' them several years." He further esteems 
the Pelasgian to be the Magogian or Scythian ( i. e, the Irish 
language) and he says paraphrasing an expression of Plato, 
" that it is in the Pelasgian (or Irish) that the proper etymo- 
logies are to be sought, and that, if we would go higher, we 
must make the last appeal to the Creator himself." In short, 
he indirectly asserts that Irish is the language of Paradise. — 
Remains ofJaphet, chap. xi. 

t Pliny mentions a manuscript of the Iliad on paper of so 
thin a texture, that it might be contained in a nut-shell. — 
Peignot speaks of a celebrated copy on the skin of a dra- 
gon. 

J Benvenuto Cellini relates, that when he was a boy, his 
father pointed out to him a Salamander, living and evidently 
enjoying himself in the glow of a fire. The old gentleman 



arjjaumaturgti£. 103 

A postscript; where the Trojan tale ends, 
Proves that 'twas writ in the Greek Kalends.* 
And Cambridge Barnesf would swear that Colophon 
Bears the sign-manual of King Solomon. 
Homer and Ossian thrummed the Lyre, each 
To the same tongue — Phoenician 's Irish ; 
This is indisputably taught us 
By ^Hanno's Punic prate, in Plautus : 

(who appears to have been a link in the Mnemonic system be- 
tween Simonides and Feinagle) gratified his sou at the same 
time with a sound box on the ear, merely to "confirm" his 
memory in the retention of the fact. Benevenuto, it may be 
supposed,, wished the Salamander in *** *, and the animal was 
not likely to make any objection on the score of change of cli- 
mate. 

* These same Greek Kalends bear strong analogy to the 
modern " vulgar 5 ' epoch of "Tib's Eve." u Every body 
knows that the feast of St. Tib occurs neither before nor after 
Christmas." 

t He has laboured to shew that Solomon was the author of 
the Iliad. 

J u We have not, I am persuaded, in our possession the 
speech of Hanno, the Carthaginian, but of various transcribers 
of Plautus ; and it may be conjectured that Plautus himself 
did not understand the Punic language more than Milphio, 
whom he has chosen as interpreter. The great affinity found 
in many words — nay, in whole sentences of this speech, between 

H 



104 iiriaumatiu'sug. 

But Greek (for rhyme we'll call it Hellic) 

Can't "hold corrivaP' with the Gaelic. 

And Polyglots, that had been able 

To act as Dragomans at Babel, 

Your prosing language-lumber'd fellows — 

Such as *Jones ; tDuret, or jPostellus — ■ 

the Punic and the Irish (Bearla Feini or Phoenician dialect) 
strengthened and supported by the collation of the former 
pages, urged me to attempt the Irish transcription." — Vallaa- 
cez/'s Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language. 
Plautus — Punic. 

" Yth al o mm ua lonuth sicoratkissi me com sith." 

Irish. 
" Iaith alio nimh ttath lonnaithe ! socruidhise me com sith." 
" Omnipotent, much»dreaded Deity of this country, assuage nay trou- 
bled mind." 

" Teige O'Neaghtan, or Norton, collated the Punic Speech 
in Plautus with the Irish, in the year 1742, many years before 
General Vallancey published his collation of that Speech." — 
Transactions of the Iberno-Celtic Society, 
* Sir William Jones. 
" He had so many languages in stoie, 
" That Fame alone can speak of him in more.'' 

f Claude Duret, President a Moulins, who published in the 
year 1613, " A Treasury of the History of the Languages of 
the Universe ; containing the origin, beauties, perfections, de- 
clensions, mutations, changes, conversions, and ruins of forty- 
two human Languages, independently of those of Birds and 
Beasts. 

I Postellus was master of eighteen languages, and it was 



&3&umatur&u& lOo 

Who deem'd the lore of tongues a proud thing, 

Xot knowing Irish, knew just nothing, 

Irish is (or old Lilly lies)* 

The true court-language of the skies ; 

And he was guiltless of misnomer, 

Who fixed in Heaven the home of Homer, f 

For, from the pure lips of the high Elect J 

He caught the Coelo- Celtic dialect, 

Irish — in it Earth's " First Man" § won a 

Soft conquest o'er the " Prima Donna" \\ 

And wrote, when doomed with sweat of brow 

To delve, his treatise on the Plough.^" 

said of him, that he might traverse all the nations of the earth 
without an interpreter. 

* " Lilly informs us, that in his various conferences with 
angels, their voice resembled that of the Irish." — Curiosities 
of Literature. 

f Sannazarius — witness his distich :— 

" Smyrna, Rhodes, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athenae, 
" Cedite jam : Coelum patria Maeonidae est." 
J " The Gaelic is the language spoken before the Deluge, and 
probably the language of Paradise. "—Shaw, Pref. Gcelic Diet, 
§ Adam. || Eve. 

5 " There is reason to believe that Adam composed a work 
on husbandry, ^—Annals of Literature, Lond, 1702, 



100 CIuiumatttt'gtt& 

I shewed the tract, — it boasts no big leaf, 

Each of its canons fills a fig-leaf : * 

Tho' used for purposes less decent f 

In later times, yet not quite recent, 

The fig-tree, aided by some stitches, 

Made Adam's Books, as well as Breeches. "£ 



33aarag — J^*pulri)ral Hamp* 

Vanquished thus far, my Rival's taper 
Yields him a subject, still, to vapour. 
When the warm winds have swept the snows 
On Libanus a flowret blows, 



* The ancients wrote on any leaves they found adapted to 
their purpose —hence the leaf of a book, alluding to that of a 
tree, seems to be derived. 

f " Olim truncus ficulnus.'* — Hor, Lib, 1, Sat. viii. 

J *' And they made themselves breeches of fig-leaves." — Old 
Translation, 



Cjjauntatuttjuj", 307 

Invisible to human eye 

While Day's broad glare usurps the sky. 

But, 'neath the clouded cope of Night, 

It pours a pure and playful light. 

Even some grave Rabbins go so far as 

To say. these phosphor plants, eall'd Baaras, 

Served, in times past, the dancing Devil* 

As " links" at their infernal revels.* 

My quenchless lamp threw, when display 'd, 
His twinkling taper into shade ; 
'Twas the same light that chased the gloom 
Within the long-forgotten tomb 
Of Cicero's fair and favorite Daughter : + 
And when some Curiosi sought her, 



* Josepkus, on the other hand, speaks of the efficacy of 
the plant Baaras in scaring- away Daemons, from the abhorrence 
in which it is held by them : 

" They hate the light because their deeds are dark." 

f Tullia. She died in the year 44 A. C. In the Pontificate 
of Paul III, her tomb is said to have been discovered, with 



108 CDaumaturgu^ 

Burst on the senses of the seers, 
Undimm'd thro' thrice five hundred years. 
1 hold, when Nature's course is run, 
This lamp shall long survive the sun. 



JHtstellatrea* 

My Rival now produced Tobacco, 
Got from * Park's sable guide, Isaaco. 
But I, who some years since had been a 
Pretended fHadgi at Medina, 
The magnet found, which — truce with scoffing- 
Suspends in air the Prophet's coffin ; 



the words " Tulliolce Filice mzcb" inscribed thereon, and a 
lamp was found burning within it, which must have remained 
unextinguished during 15 centuries* Ferrari, in 'his work, De 
Lucernis Sepulcralibus, has taken the trouble of invalidating 
this story. 

* Mungo Park. 
f A Mussulman Pilgrim. 



93>amiiaturgti£. 109 

Then filch'd such fragments from the lump, as 

Made a fit needle for my compass. 

Directed by that loadstone peerless, 

Wilds, wastes, and waves I've travers'd fearless. 

Isaac ne'er journey' d half so far ofi. 

As where I pluck'd my "sweet Cigar'' off; 

'Twas gather* d — while we chased the Tiger — 

Just where the Xile becomes the Niger. 

The Chase here introduced his Stud, 
Unmatched in mettle, bone, and blood ; 
Horse-heralds would esteem as fable 
The line of th' " Eclipse" of his stable ; 
He mounted quickly to its head degree, 
Thro' all the various grades of pedigree, 
Married Dams, Grand-dams, in batallions, 
To History's most illustrious stallions, 
Connecting, without one hiatus > 
Bucephalus with * Licit at us ; 

* Caligula's Horse. He was Consul " Presumptive" at the 
time of the Emperor's death. 



110 Cfmumaturgu*. 

Bravest of Barbs the first was reckoned ; 

Caligula bestrode the second, 

And fed him — as the story 's told — 

On grain bedipp'd in fluid gold : 

Had th' Emp'ror lived a few weeks later^ 

This steed had been, at least Dictator. 

Owning his "Horse Parade'' was splendid, 
I order d forth, when he had ended, 
—Child of the churn'd and yeasty wave — a 
Foam-form'd courser, Ochisrava : * 
My breed of Zebras came behind him ; 
But the Wight's wonder quite confin'd him 
To that most cherished of my cattle, 
First in the field of chase or battle ; 
Sure-footed Steed ! in measured march 
He'll pass Al Sirat'st awful arch, 

* The seven-headed horse of the Hindoo Mythology, pro- 
duced, amongst other marvellous matters, by churning the 
ocean with the tail of the great serpent, Vasoky. 

f A bridge, according to the Mahometans, whose arch spans 
the abyss of Hell ; its roadway is represented to be as narrow 



€£atmtatuvctus. Ill 

Altho' its Hell-impending ledge 

Is narrow as a sabre's edge : 

While not an Emir lives could ken it, 

'Twas " Alborak/' the Prophet's Genet, 

Sulking amidst the conflict's heat, he 

Erst kick'd his Lord into a treaty, 

Whereby, endued with soul immortal, 

He'll pass of Paradise the portal, 

And there, when this world's work is over, 

Luxuriate on celestial clover.* 



and sharp as the edge of a scymitar. Upon the last day it will 
constitute an ordeal on a great scale, as all must then attempt 
to traverse it — the good shall pass it without apprehension or 
accident, the wicked fall into the gulph. 

* Mahomet attributed a considerable portion of his successes 
to the spirit, energy, and admirable instinct of Alborak, his fa- 
vourite charger. This horse is believed to have been a Genet 
of the kind called by Pliny " thieldones" tellers or measurers 
of steps, and said by Justin to be the offspring of the Winds. 
The Arabian Commentators, amongst other extraordinary proofs 
of the sagacity of Alborak, relate that he refused on a vital emer- 
gency to proceed with his master, until he had extorted from 
his all-powerful intercession the gift of an indestructible soul, 
and enjoyments of eternal duration, befitting his taste and spe= 
cies. Some writers affirm that this concession was exacted at the 



H2 C&aumaturgiig, 

I rode this holy " Hack" some weeks ago, 
E'en to the huge u Ha Ha," near Mexico, 
Which swaggering Dons swear, in bravado, 
Was leap'd by Cornet Alva r ado ; * 
(This is as impudent a lie as 
Any exposed by Bernal Diaz :) 
Then, tho' there's scarce a spot to fix feet, 
And the dike measures thirty-six feet, 

crisis of a decisive engagement ; others suppose the steed to 
have taken advantage of the interesting moment when Mahomet* 
being summoned to heaven by the Angel Gabriel, was unable 
to avail himself of the invitation without the assistance of his 
horse. — Alborak was of " the breed of the true runners, who, 
when they run, strike fire, and who confer prosperity even unto the 
Day of Judgment." So testifies the Prophet himself. 

* In the disastrous retreat of Cortez from Mexico on the 
" Noche triste," the Spanish standard was carried and almost 
miraculously preserved by Alvarado, who affirmed that he had 
passed at a leap the last aperture in the causeway, measuring 
upwards of thirty-two English feet. Bernal Diaz, one of his 
companions in arms, in his history of the conquest, expresses 
reasonable doubts of the possibility of the feat. Some have, 
however, endeavoured to reconcile it with truth, by supposing 
Alvarado to have availed himself of the assistance of the staff 
of the standard, which resembled that of the Labarum of the an- 
cients, and might, therefore, have been used in the same way 
as the pole in the school-boy sport of " Hare and Hounds," 



€$aumaturgu£. 113 

Cleared it— maintaining my renown, Sirs, 
As undisputed Prinxe of Bouncers, 



Wiyt C^tragrammatum— ©enmitment 

The Contest ceased : — exhaustion bade 
My Rival " battre la ckamade ;" 
Then he who, vapouring, first despised me, 
Submissively apostrophized me : 
" Subdued, I 6 strike' — but may I starve else 
" (Man of monstrosities and marvels !) 
" Thou hast been tutored in the gamut, on 
" Which to pronounce the ' Tetragammaton/* 



* A term adopted to express the Hebrew name of God, 
HIITj " Jehovah."— " Whoever," say the Jewish writers, 
" can accurately enunciate this word shall possess the power of 
operating miracles to an unlimited extent." The Brahmins 
attribute similar virtues to the " ineffable mystic monosyllable' 5 



114 CjEjaumatiti'gu& 

" The Name, that may not be express'd 
(i By tongues of the unchrism'd, unblest— 
" If with true emphasis and tone, 
" To the ' [nitiate' only known, 
" That Name from any Mortal's lip is sent, 
" It makes him (quoad Earth) omnipotent. 
" Then deign to say, wilt thou assuage 
" My terrene purgatory's rage ? — 
u For know," exclaimed the Inconnu, 
" I am th' accursed Wandering Jew !"* 



Om or Aum, if properly articulated. The Hermetic Masons 
comprize their grand mystery in the name " Jehovah," which 
is engraved on the stone brought by the Knights Templars 
from Palestine. 

* The subject of this widely- extended tradition is supposed 
to have been prominent in offering indignities to the Redeemer 
on his way to Calvary, and to have been condemned to wander 
over the earth, until the " Second Coming," branded on the 
forehead with a fiery cross. Paul Eitsen, Bishop of Sleswick, 
asserts that he had a long conference with him ; and many per- 
sons, at different and very distant periods, profess to have met 
him under the name of John Buttadeus. — Joannes de Tempori- 
bus, who is reported to have lived upwards of three centuries, 
might well have been mistaken for him. 



Citfumaturcju^ 115 

He raised the Tephilim^ that bound 
His throbbing temples' tortured round- — 
A fire-proof frontlet, wove at Sestos, 
Of incombustible Asbestos, 
Beneath which, on the calcined bone,, 
A cross of glowing flame was shewn ; 
Insulted Heaven had, in its ire, 
Set on his front its seal in fire, 



Instant I answer'd : " I have heard 
"The Tetragrammaton — dread word ! 
" Spoke by an ancient Dervise Seer, 
" When late, upon their cycle year 



* " Tephilim, frontlets worn by the Jews. They were 
also called Phylacteries ; and the Pharisees were particularly 
ostentatious in the use of them, wearing- considerably larger 
ones than the other Jews. 



116 Cfjaumaturgud. 

" Of congress, I was won to tarry 
" With Flamel's patriarch parti carre ;* 
" Yea, I might utter it in such way as 
" Would matter dislocate, and ' Chaos 
" Should come again' — a milder balm 
" And anodyne your pangs shall calm/' 
Forthwith, I minister relief 
To the immortal child of grief — ■ 
This phial quickly quench' d the pain 
That rack'd so long his burning brain. 
The slightest sigh that scapes its seal 
Would the best Blow-pipe's flame congeal ! 



* Paul Lucas affirms, that he met at Broussa four persons, in 
the garb of Dervises, who, with all the freshness of youth about 
them, had yet lived some hundreds of years, One of them, a 
man of profound and various learning, assured him that Nicho- 
las Flamel, whose pretensions as an adept have been already 
alluded to, was still in being, and formed one of their party. — 
They were in the habit of assembling together every twen- 
tieth year, and Broussa was at that time their place of meeting. 
Of course, their longevity is to be attributed to the possession 
of the Elixir. 



C^umaturgus* 117 

'Tis one of those hermetic glasses, 

Filled with refrigerating gases, 

That I, through space while on my return, 

Charged at the sunless u Belts of Saturn," 

Heaven's chilliest orb. — Whilst hurrying from it, 

I chopp'd on the Newtonian Comet, 

Which (credit philosophic fooling) 

Would spend two thousand years in cooling ; 

To test th' hypothesis, I give out, 

From my tube's valve, the gentlest whiff out ; 

It made that fiery mass as dim nigh 

As clinkers from a glass-house chimney. 



Doubtless, each learned mechanic man has 
Read of the Eagle that Montanus* 

* Pietro Jacopo Martelli, an Italian Poet, has written a 
dialogue on Flying, entitled J)d VqIq**— The celebrated Re= 



118 C&aiimatursiis, 

Made, as a mime of life, so true. 

That, art-create, it fed, or flew 

To any indicated region, 

E'en as a cote-born carrier-pigeon. 

Spreading those wide and wondrous wings, 

Braced to my back by secret springs, 

I late upsoar'd from th' Isle of Thanet, 

Bound on a voyage to each Planet ; 

But, ere I'd reach' d the nearest star yet, 

Met the " rapt Prophet/' in his chariot ; 

Brushing all hypothetic gloss off, he 

Solved some cramp problems in philosophy : 

Each meteoric stone 's a cinder, 

Thrown from the case that holds his tinder ; 

Your shooting stars are — without joking — 

Sparks that he whiffs forth whilst he 's smoking. 



giomontanus made an eagle, which, on the approach of the 
Emperor, flew a considerable distance to meet him, and return- 
ed to the city with him. *' Let us," says Peter Ramus, " cease 
to wonder at the Dove of Archytas, for Nuremburg boasts an 
Eagle which soars on geometrical wings. " 



STj&aumaturgus. 119 

He said, that had he, in his gay days, 
Allowed the mighty Archimedes 
To stand awhile within his curricle, 
He 'd wrought the great mechanic miracle 
Of shifting Terra from her station, 
And revolutionized Creation.* 

Proofs of these items ye require, 
Varlets ! they 're true, or I'm a Liar.f 



* An ingenious Modern has favoured the world with a prac- 
tical essay on the modus operandi, and even indicated, by re- 
ference to diagrams, the proportions of a series of levers which 
Archimedes intended to have put into action to lift the Earth 
out of its orbit. 

f This asseveration is borrowed from Mandeville, or some 
other of the li Early Voyagers." How tersely antithetical the 
proposition and the penalty ! 



Farimis Facades* 

Eftsoons the a Prophet's" car was driven 
Close by the winged steed of heaven, 
I lightly rose, and nimbly sprung 
Where Pegasus by Jove was hung ; 
Bestriding then his loins, I rode the hack 
Right thro' the cycle of the Zodiac, 
And played, en passant, eight or ten tricks 
Amongst its denizen Eccentrics. 
I found — like stags in time of rutting — 
Aries with Caprigornus butting, 
Dashed their colliding skulls together, 
Which apoplex'd both Goat and Wether. 



(£Iwumatur$u$, 121 

Music, 'tis somewhere well express'd, 
u Bends oaks and soothes the savage breast :" 
Leo looked mischievously sturdy — 
I calmed him with my hurdy-gurdy, 
Snatched from Olympus' sacred summit, 
Where Orpheus long had loved to thrum it ; 
And there, what ogling, cooing, billing, 
Gavotting, waltzing, and quadrilling, 
'Mongst Fauns and Nymphs, from grove and grotto. 
Who crowded to his gay Rid otto. 

I now, midst pastimes multifarious, 
" Drew the long bow" with Sagittarius ; 
Nine times the monster's erring twang 
Dismissal the arrow's wandering fang ; 
Of his vast object shooting wide, 
(He aim'd each shaft at Taurus' side) ; 
Sublimely mal-adroit, the Loon 
Would miss a targe large as the Moon, 
i 2 



122 C!raifmatur£n& 

And might have rivalled in renown 

Him who of old won Gallien's crown**' 

Seizing th' indignant Bow, I drew 

Th' impelling string that swayed the yew ; 

Brief time the dart was doom'd to linger— 

Its swift shaft chafed my index-finger, 

And, in the pit-pat of a pulse, I 

Saw the barb'd point transfix the " BuZZ's-eye" 

Devils or Demigods, I dare trim any"— 
So challenged the gymnastic Gemini ; 
And distanced, in successive heats, 
The junior of the Twin Athletes ; 
Lowered the disdainful crest and tall looks 
Of Jove's prime Horse-breaker, proud Pollux, 
To weigh, as each Newmaxket-?ncm does, 
We hung the Libra near "the Stand-house" : 



* During the public games in the Amphitheatre, the Empe= 
ror Gallien, in a whimsical vein, conferred the crown upon an 
Archer who had the rare merit of exhausting his quiver with- 



££aiuuaturgu& 123 

Toby the signal gave by tip o' drum, 
And, whisk ! we flew along the Hippodrome, 
Heaven's highway for Cobs, Cabs, and Gingles, 
Mac-Adamized with starry shingles.* 

Shrill shrieks and frequent sobs assail 
Mine ear — as 't were a woman's wail : 
From its strait sheath my angry blade 
Half leaped, to vindicate the maid ; 
The twinkling lights of ancient chivalry 
Maintain with me such feeble rivalry, 
As modern Sophs with Scotus Dun, f 
Or Fire-flies with the quenchless Sun, 
I sped, directed by the sound, 
Saw Virgo as a culprit bound, 



out once wounding a huge ox 3 at which his arrows were dis- 
charged. 

* The Via Lactea. 

f He must have been a Caledonian, who sought to derive 
the epithet " Dunce" (quasi Bunse) from an ironical applica- 
tion of the name of this distinguished native of Scotia Major 
(Ireland.) 



J24 Cftfumaturgn*. 

Whilst Castor, tho' a well-known weneher, 

Worried the Waterman to drench her ; 

The Bully swore, that, in the lip way, 

She was the Zodiac's Xantippe, 

Seizing each topic that gave handle 

To that eaves-dropping fiend, called Scandal ; 

Nay, he, on th' oath of a Celestial, 

Averr'd the Virgin was no Vestal ; 

Condemn'd her then, ioxfaux pas various, 

To thy scold's ducking-stool Aquarius. 

When cowering Nymph or fierce Virago 

Stands charged with sin, true Knight cries " Nego; 9> 

I, as her champion and protector, 

Soon rescued Virgo from this Hector, 

" Bade him defiance, stern and high, 

And gave him in his throat the lie ;" 

Then, skilled in ev'ry walk of warring, 

E'en to the petite guerre of sparring, 

I threw the guantlet down to Castor ; 

One short round proved he'd met his Master ; 



A pat, the gentlest of my thumpings, 
Dismiss'd a dozen of the gum-pins, 
Wherewith he masticates his victuals— 
So chits at nine-pins prostrate skittles ; 
The grinders thus lost, I suppose, he 
Gave to some Dentist Virtuosi ; 
For, tho' the tale by fools be flouted, 
They must have 'twixt his jaw-bones sprouted 
Long ere th' unholy hordes of Saracens 
Defiled Jerusalem with garrisons. 
All babes, since born, of teeth are stinted 
A third — 'tis by grave Rigold hinted.* 
Alas ! that Nature, in her cheating, 
Should fail to mar their taste for eating. 
The nextjblow fell, like stroke of paving- 
-Stone, on his skull — then Castor gave in. 



• Rigold, Physician and Historiographer to Philip Augus- 
tus, King of France, asserts, in his work, " Gesta Phillip! 
Augusti Francorum Regis," that since the Turks became pos- 
sessed of the Holy City, children have been stinted to 20 or 23 



126 C&aumatursu*. 

Earth had long dubb'd me Chief of Bibbers, 
And Heaven now hail'd me " First of Fibbers.'' 

If ignorant or sceptic, you can 
Dip into Strabo, Pliny, Lucan, 
They'll prove (tho' th' Ancients sometimes will lie) 
There lives a Lybian tribe — the Psylli, 
Who, strangely poison-proof, can gripe, or 
Toy with the Rattle-snake or Viper ; * 
Nay, each invulnerable fellow 
Fondles a Cobra di Capello, 
And mimics, in its living folds, 
The serpent-wand that Merc'ry holds ; 



teeth, instead of 30 or 32 with which they had been furnished 
prior to that period. 

* Among the moderns, Hasselquist, Savary, and Bruce, 
have seen and described these " serpent charmers," of whom 
it is remarkable, that their secret has remained undiscovered 
through 2000 years. " I will not hesitate to aver," says Bruce, 
" that I have seen at Cairo a man take a Cerastes with his 
naked hand, tie it about his neck, like a necklace, after which, 
beginning with the tail, he ate it, as one would do a stock of 
celery-, without an^repugnance*" 



CJjaumaturgug. 127 

Then, deeming it no dish inept, he'll, 

Like a mere radish, scran ch the reptile. 

I, who have used — unharm'd as those— 

Whip-snakes as garters to my hose, 

Garnished my insteps, too, on dress days, 

With shoe-ties, each a quick Cerastes, 

Seized (for a relish,^ like a Harpy, on 

The wakeful and malignant Scorpion. 

The tenants of the Zodiac's ring, 

Amazed, beheld him strike his sting 

Right to his very vitals, thro* his hide — * 

For me he perpetrated suicide.* 

While I, amidst applauses boisterous, 

Pouch'd him, like shell-fish at an Oyster-house. 

Sharp yearnings soon I felt for dinner — 
5 Tis held, that exercise, or thin air 



* Felo de se is not altogether confined to the human animal. 
" When all the blandishments of life are gone," the Scorpion 
is said occasionally tc give iv the act the sanction of his ex* 
ample. 



128 Q$aitmatitrgu£, 

In regions elevate, produces 
Strange wamblings 'midst the gastric juices : 
Not soldier, plund'ring for his ration 
La Trapped pinch'd Cenobites in Passion- 
-Week, could meet scene more discouraging, 
Than are the Zodiac's fields for foraging ; 
The starvelings, in its circle pent, 
Seem damn'd to a perennial Lent. 
Leave lean Astronomy her twelve signs, 
I love your fat Inn-keeping Elves' Signs. 
Toby, whose feats (they claim some stanzas) 
Ralpho's eclipse, or Sancho Panza's, 
Stout Squire ! the most adroit of Butlers, 
Most " cunning" Cook, and pink of Sutlers, 
Seized on the Pisces — they were/at fish, 
Black Soles, or some such sort of flat-fish ; 
Firm and well-flavoured, fresh and viscous, 
He fried them on the Dog-star's discus ; 
And then he e'en contrived to nab sauce, 
Converting Cancer into Crab-sauce. 



JHwumaturgua. 129 



i&e pln\— Jlclar JHacufte — Wi)t $olt. 

The Signs despatch'd, I turned sunward 
The wing'd Steed's head, and gallopp'd onward, 
Nojm ore each stupid System- monger 
Shall do sage Kepler's memory wrong, or 
Supplant the scientific troth he says 
By false, tbo' common -place, hypotheses.* 
'Twas his to gauge, define, and trace, 
The orbed occupants of space, 
And demonstrate the shoreless sky 
As a true Ocean hung on high, 
Thro' whose etherial tides so deep 
The Planets in fixed orbits sweep ; 
Not, as your later seers assert, 
Dark masses, pulseless and inert, 



* " Kepler supposed the planets to be huge animals, who 
warn round the Sun by means of fins, acting on the ethereal 
fluid as those of fishes do upon water.' ' 



130 Cfiaumaturcjus. 

But piscatory creatures, rife 
In every attribute of life, 
With oary fins and rudder tails, 
Plied at their poles, they swim as whales, 
(Star-fish Leviathans !) in play 
Around the glowing lamp of day, 
Like fascinated fish, trepanned 
By the night- Poacher's blazing brand. 
Strange rumours had just then begun 
To spread, of "spots upon the Sun ;** 
Whilst cleaving through the upper sky, 
I mark'd a u cafract" on Sol's eye ; 
Dreading disease might quench the sight 
Whence emanates the System's light,* 
All reckless of fatigue or distance, 
I hastened to afford assistance, 



* Roger Bacon, as well as the Stoics and Platonists, sup- 
posed that rays of light were emitted from the eye, and de- 
duced his opinion, amongst other reasons, from the fact, that 
certain animals possess the power of seeing in the dark, 



&&aumciturgug. 131 

And, with unequalled skill and labour, 

" Couclid" the great Patient with my Sabre. 

Return d to Earth — I stepped from Finland. 
Across the ice, and found " lost Greenland/' 
An Arctic over-ground Pompeii 

Seemed its chief city : — by the way, I 

Saw in its haven, streets, and houses, 

The last Whale-killers and their spouses, 

At meals, or in the sledge or skiff — 

As their own stock-fish frozen stiff, 

Like Pagod things, in rice-emboss'd work. 

Or groupes on Twelfth-night-cakes, in frost-work ? 

Or "Lot's wife done in salt"— a wag might 

Call each an animal Stalagmite. 

Clearing the Icebergs at a jump, 

I reach'd the long-sought Polar stump, 

And with my sword's well-temper'd point, 

Upon its last and largest joint, 

(Which seem'd, indeed, for alt'-relief meant) 

Carved my Crest, Motto, and Achievement ; 



132 ftjmimaiunjus. 

The Crest— I hate heraldic loading — 

Is a plain Thunder-bolt exploding ; 

A Skull, of nose-bridge reft, and chin-bones, 

Forcep'd 'twixt a saltier of shin-bones, 

(Modeird from fossil Man — 1 guess'd his 

Age — he was Diluvii testis, 

Found midst anomalous exuvias, 

Unknown to Scheuchzer or to Cuvier,*) 

Singly and simply fills the field 

Of my broad unpretending shield ; 

In proper hands the pregnant motto, 

Sealed and concealed, shall rest in petto, 

Till Parry, o'er Ice " floes" and " packs," will 

Affect t' have reached the Polar axle ; 

Then shall the sacred seal be broken, 

And truth developed by the token. 



* The Homo Diluvii testis of Scheuchzer, deposited at Haer= 
lem, is referred by Cuvier to the genus Proteus. That the spe- 
cimen used by Thaumaturgus as a model, was truly a " fossil 
man will not be doubted: he has " studied humanity" too 
deeply to err. 



2ri)3umatttr<jus* 133 



ffl£ ffa\ilfl)iQ\u—ffll)t Catastrophe* 

Thou boldest of the Christian Leaders, 
Thou Lodestar of the crazed Crusaders, 
Puissant Knight, Turk-slaught'ring Godfrey ! 
Who slew'st ten thousand — Chiefs and odd fry— 
A Soldan barr'd thy path at Ascalon : * 
His giant strength impell'd the Rascal on— 
For, at the least, he stood as high as 
David's thrasonical Golias, 
Whilst a mail suit of hammer' d steel 
Cased his huge frame from head to heel ; 
One stroke of thy resistless war- axe 
Cleft the Turk's morion, skull, and thorax ; 
Then, as a huxter's knife cuts dry cheese, 
Severed in twain the i( os coccygis"- — 



* Thaumaturgus, for the sake of the rhyme, which is pecu- 
liarly felicitous, has taken a pardonable liberty with topography 
here. It was not at Ascalon that the Crusader King of Jeru= 
lem, on the person of the Turkish Captain, literally reduced 
to practice, with his battle-axe, the maxim (i Divide et impera, 5 ' 



134 CSaumatursus. 

Nor stayed the deep disruption, till it 
Split him, as woodman splits a billet ; 
And, reeking with his smoking raddle, 
Gash'd. his scared barb e'en thro' the saddle, 
The Sabre from my loins dependant, 
T wrung from Godfrey's true descendant ; 
'Tis fairly framed, thro' half its length, 
From that famed axe of proven strength ; 
The edge, which prudent men in awe shun, 
Was forged from mad Orlando's fauchion. 
Once thro' a Pagan's neck* it glided, 
But then, so dext'rously divided 



* The Poet says, that the upper and lower man were di- 
vided by the stroke, and almost appears to attach to Durindana 
the powers of the spear of Telephus, which could heal as 
well as wound, 

" So keen the edge of this enchanted steel, 
The stroke its lord had given, it seemed to heal, 
Nor did the wretch who met it scarce the anguish feel." 

" Thus, when Orlando, ranging o'er the plain, 
Hath at one blow his foeman cut in twain, 
The path his sword had made so nicely closed, 
That on one half the other still reposed, 
And as, while rage inflates each tumid vein, 
The ardent warrior knows no sense of pain, 
Still did the Pagan deal his blows around, 
Nor, till he fell asunder, knew the deadly wound, 



Cliauuiaturgtrf. 135 

That isthmus 'twixt the trunk and head, 
The fool forgot that he was dead ; 
Whene'er men's midriffs felt its gaff in- 
- Fixed, their gay ghosts flitted laughing.* 
And, as Orlando's sword of flame 
Rejoiced in a resounding name, 
(The Knight baptized it Durixdana,) 
Whilst the euphonious " style" Samsanah, 
In filigrane of gold, damask- ed 
The redolent sabre of Al Raschid, f 

* Those wounded in the diaphragm were supposed to die in 
convulsions of laughter. 

t The sword of the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid, was named 
Samsanah. The Emperor Nicephorus having sent him a pre- 
sent of twenty fine sabres, he, with as many strokes of this fa- 
mous faulchi on, cut through them all, as if they had been so 
many radishes.— " The strange affectation of giving names to 
swords was common ; Joyosa is the name of Charlemain's 
sword in Aspramonte ; Chrysoar is the name of Arthegal's 
sword in Spenser ; Caliburnof King Arthur ; s, in the Romance 
of that name; Ascalon of St. George's, in the Seven Cham- 
pions; Tranchera of Agrican's, in Boyardo ; and in Ariosto, 
besides Fusberta, we have Rogero's Balisarda, and Orlando's 
Durindana." — Hook, Certain sword-cutlers of Damascus, in 
the middle ages, are supposed to have possessed a secret art of 
imp arting to their blades a delicate and permanent fragrance. 

K 



136 Cfjautnaturgtt*. 

I clubb'd my blade, with true congruity^ 
Solution of all continuity! 

x\non ! in memory of th' events 
T raised a mountain-monument : 
Crowning Columbia's Cordilleras 
With peaks from th 1 Hiraala Sierras— 
The point 's my u Patmos/' there my hut is, 
The monolythic fane of Buttis.* 
And when the sphere-convulsing sound 
Shall, peal on peal, thro' Heaven's profound 
Speak the avenging thunders hurl'd, 
Foredoomed to desolate the world, 
There, on my Tripod, o'er the pyre, 
While the last Pine-woodst sink in fire, 

* The monolythic Chapel of Latona at Buttis measured forty 
cubits in every dimension : It was covered by another single 
stone, forty cubits square and four thick. This enormous load 
was transported on rafts from the Island of Philoe to Buttis, a 
distance of two hundred leagues, and was, beyond all doubt,, 
the greatest weight ever moved by the power of man. 

f The Mountain Pines, flourishing at an elevation of 14,000 
feet above the level of the ocean, will, of course, furnish the 
crowning billets of " Nature's funeral Pile." 



Cliattmaturgu*, 137 

Last lightnings scathe, last earthquakes rive, 

Last of the Living ! I'll survive. 

And, while volcanic airs I breathe, 

Gasped from the glowing gulphs beneath, 

When Earth's brief agony shall cease, 

I'll seize, to light my u Pipe of Peace/' 

(Red relic of the Consummation !) 

The " Caput Mortuum" of Creation. 

And thus — Vain Varlets ! dare ye ape us ?— 

Reduce Plus Ultra to a Ne Plus ! 



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